Service Delivery
Setting the Standard for Cloud Computing Services
One of the primary benefits of Cloud Computing is how easy and inexpensive it is to get started— there’s no hardware, software, or related infrastructure to purchase and maintain. Instead, customers simply choose a subscription level that matches their needs while their vendor takes care of everything else.
Everything else, of course, includes a vendor’s “service delivery”—the complex technologies and processes that protect each customer’s data from both physical loss and unauthorized use, guarantee that data is available around the clock and without delay, and ensure that the vendor can maintain acceptable service delivery as the customer’s user base, applications, and number of transactions grow.
With more than ten years experience in delivering highly available, secure, and scalable applications via the web, no one knows more about Cloud Computing service delivery than salesforce.com. We identified the following seven standards of Cloud Computing service delivery (download the PDF). We live by these standards and we recommend you hold all of your cloud computing service providers to these standards as well.
World-Class Security
The Force.com platform ensures that customer data is protected with physical security, data encryption, user authentication, application security, and more.
Trust and Transparency
The Force.com platform promises full transparency into performance and availability data. Detailed information and advance notice of maintenance activities are available to customers—and the public—at trust.salesforce.com.
True Multitenancy
The key innovation that makes cloud computing possible is a multitenant architecture, in which all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained (like eBay or Google), maximizing performance and reliability and making upgrades a snap.
Proven Scale
The Force.com platform has successfully scaled as the salesforce.com customer base has grown. Today, we support over 63,200 customers, 100,000 custom applications, and more than ten billion total transactions per quarter.
High Performance
The Force.com platform has a track record of fast application performance everywhere in the world, both for the delivery of Web pages and for transaction processing.
Complete Disaster Recovery
Seamless disaster recovery is made possible by our fully mirrored, global, data centers. Maintaining full-scale backup facilities enables Force.com .com to deliver consistent performance and reliability even in the event of a regional disaster.
High Availability
The Force.com platform recently invested in three brand-new data centers around the world to ensure the highest availability and service quality for our customers.
For details on the seven standards that should be required of any Cloud Computing vendor, read our white paper, " The Seven Standards of Cloud Computing Service Delivery".