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Salesforce.com Joins Liberty Alliance Project

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - June 16, 2003 - Salesforce.com®, the world leader in delivering software-as-service, today announced its membership in the Liberty Alliance Project as an associate member. Salesforce.com will lend its experience in the " software as a service" model to aid in the consortium's effort to develop an open and interoperable standard for federated network identity and identity-based web services.

As a member of the Alliance, salesforce.com will help contribute to the body whose goal is to create specifications that incorporate, leverage and support other industry standards, allowing members and organizations to build products and services that interoperate and promote secure federated identity management. Salesforce.com will also incorporate Liberty specifications into its utility-based architecture.

The Liberty Alliance was created to develop an open standard for network identity spanning all network-connected devices. With the launch of sforce, a Java[tm] Enabled application development platform, on June 3rd, 2003, salesforce.com now allows its developers to leverage and connect an array of their preferred Web capabilities, services, and tools to a network of open standards.

"Sforce represents the type of application development that is possible as companies adopt service-oriented architectures, which are particularly attractive to organizations looking to quickly deliver applications without making the large and risky upfront investments in IT infrastructure and staff," said salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff. "Salesforce.com is working to make the authentication features in salesforce.com and sforce fully compliant with specifications being put forward by the Liberty Alliance."

The Liberty Alliance is made up of more than 160 members, representing a worldwide cross-section of organizations ranging from educational institutions and government organizations, to service providers and financial institutions, to technology firms and wireless providers. Federated identity will help drive the next generation of the Internet, offering businesses and consumers convenience and choice. Membership is open to all commercial and non-commercial organizations.

Federated network identity enables ubiquitous single sign-on, decentralized authentication and open authorization from any device connected to the Internet, from traditional desktop computers and cellular phones through to TVs, automobiles, credit cards and point-of-sale terminals.