• Salesforce CRM
• The AppExchange
• Successforce.com
• developer.force.com

Salesforce.com Unveils Spring ’07 Featuring AppSpace, a New Model for Enterprises to Engage Customers On-Demand

LONDON – salesforce.com Spring ’07 Launch Event – March 19, 2007 –   Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services , today announced the release of Salesforce Spring ’07, its 22 ^nd generation release. Spring ‘07 features AppSpace, a new product which enables companies to engage with customers using Salesforce and AppExchange applications inside a secure, branded online environment. AppSpace is scheduled to be made a part of Spring ‘07 in April. In addition, Spring ’07 dramatically advances every component of salesforce.com’s Circle of Success, including the Salesforce CRM applications and the Apex platform.

AppSpace – A New Model for Enterprises to Engage Customers On-Demand
AppSpace is a breakthrough new concept that enables a company to extend the power of its Salesforce, Apex, and AppExchange applications directly to its customers. Going far beyond traditional customer self-service, AppSpace enables every department to collaborate directly with the customer to elevate the customer experience and improve internal productivity. Example use cases range from document sharing and project management to collaborating via spreadsheet mash-ups or custom Apex applications. Customers interact with these applications in a secure, branded on-demand space that is fully integrated with the company’s Salesforce CRM deployment.

“Just as MySpace brought together individuals on the consumer web, AppSpace will bring together companies and their customers on the Business Web,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “We are excited to bring the End of Software to portals and blaze a new way for enterprises to engage richly and securely with their customers.”

Unlike traditional portals that are painful and slow to create, customize, and deploy, each AppSpace is delivered 100% on-demand. And because AppSpace is built on the Apex platform, it supports powerful capabilities like embedded mash-ups, custom tabs and objects, and workflow. This enables any company to quickly tailor its own unique customer experience.

“Our employees love their Salesforce and AppExchange apps, and with AppSpace, now we can easily create a secure space to bring those same apps directly to our customers.   This lets us go far beyond the traditional customer portal and build an even deeper relationship," said Mark Silber of QUALCOMM Incorporated.

“We believe that providing customers with a way to further build trust and have authentic communication with their customers is a foundational element of CRM’s future,” said Denis Pombriant, managing principal of Beagle Research Group, LLC. 

AppSpace is currently scheduled to be available in April as a limited release, and is priced starting at $995 per organization, per month.

Spring ‘07 – Advancing Every Component of the Salesforce.com Circle of Success
Salesforce.com’s unique Circle of Success strategy is an interconnected set of products and services that deliver customer success by accelerating the quantity and quality of applications built on the Apex platform. Spring ’07 fuels the momentum of every component of the Circle of Success, including the IdeaExchange, Salesforce applications, the Apex Developer Network, Apex platform, and the AppExchange.

IdeaExchange- Empowering the Community to Collectively Design Spring ‘07
Introduced in October of 2006, the IdeaExchange (http://ideas.salesforce.com ) is an online community where the salesforce.com community can create, comment on and promote new feature ideas. In less than six months, IdeaExchange has seen incredible growth in traffic and influence with more than 2,500 new ideas posted, more than 42,000 promotions and more than 3,700 comments.

Spring ’07 advances the momentum of the IdeaExchange by demonstrating salesforce.com’s responsiveness to the voice of the community. This includes delivering many of the most popular features promoted on the IdeaExchange including Time-Based Workflow (2,700 promotions), Customized Search (2,630 promotions), and Lookup Relationships between Standard Objects (913 promotions).

Additionally, IdeaExchange provides developers within the Apex Developer Network (ADN) insight into where there is the most demand, driving them to build new types of applications on the Apex platform.

Salesforce Applications – Breakthrough momentum in usability and new products

Salesforce SFA – Extending Usability Leadership
Already considered the world’s most popular sales force automation application, Salesforce SFA extends its usability leadership in Spring ’07:  

·          Customizable Search – New search features will improve search relevance and drive greater user productivity. Users can now sort search results by column and create search filter layouts to help find specific types of records.

·          Connect Outlook 3.0 - Outlook users will enjoy increased productivity through an even easier synchronization with important customer data.   Leads and accounts can be created directly in Outlook and users can upload emails with attachments to Salesforce with one click.

·          Recent Item Hovers – The latest feature to leverage AJAX in the user interface, recent item hovers allow users to further minimize clicks.   By moving a cursor over a recently viewed item, users instantly see a pop-up of the most pertinent information in the record.  

Salesforce Service & Support – Creating the Rich Service Experience
One of the hottest new apps within the Salesforce CRM family is Salesforce Service & Support. Not only does Spring ’07 enable organizations to create a rich customer service AppSpace, but Spring ’07 includes even more new service features:

·          Case Hierarchies – The Apex platform now allows Salesforce users to link related cases in a hierarchy so customer information can be better managed by having complete insight into an account. Once a “parent case” has been defined, cases can be linked and the relationships defined.

Salesforce PRM – Delivering the Most Customizable Partner Experience
With the Spring ’07 release, Salesforce Partner Relationship Management (PRM), another hit product, adds breakthrough new features to drive partner productivity and collaboration:

·          Partner Role Hierarchies – Users can now create reporting hierarchies within partner companies, delivering partner sales managers better insight into the partner pipeline and organizational coverage.

·          Enhanced Partner Emails – Salesforce PRM users will now be able to brand all of their partner communications and create triggered emails to further increase partner engagement.

·          Joint Selling – New feature enhancements enable users to get more information on the opportunities partners are working on and extends partner collaboration with partner-specific price lists.

Apex – Enabling a Wave of Even More Sophisticated On-Demand Applications
The on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications gets even stronger.   By adding powerful new capabilities in Spring '07, the Apex platform dramatically expands the sophistication of on-demand applications.

·          Time-Based Workflow – This feature further advances the workflow approvals feature from Winter ’07. Through the Apex platform, workflow functions can now trigger time-based actions and enable the scheduling of business processes.

·          Workflow Approvals via Email – Spring ‘07 enables workflow requests to flow seamlessly through your organization even when approvers aren't logged in.   Approvers can simply respond to emails from anywhere on any device - rapidly approving, rejecting, and commenting on requests.

·          Lookup Relationships Between Standard Objects – Now, Salesforce users are able to link relationships between any standard objects. For example, an email campaign can have a direct mail campaign selected in the lookup relationship so that a user can more easily compare the results from both.

In addition, the Apex Connect family of integration solutions continues to expand:

ApexConnect for Oracle – Now available with Spring ’07, ApexConnect for Oracle enables customers to seamlessly integrate Salesforce with their back-office Oracle 11i database to gain a completely integrated view of all relevant customer data in one place. Apex Connect for Oracle is available upon request, for a $12,000 annual fee for Salesforce Enterprise Edition and Unlimited Edition customers.

AppExchange – AppSpace to fuel an explosion of new types of applications
With 550 applications, AppExchange has seen tremendous momentum and acceptance in the marketplace. AppSpace will fuel the creation of a new class of applications that facilitate direct collaboration between companies and their customers.

Availability
Spring ’07 is available immediately to all 646,000 Salesforce.com subscribers. AppSpace is currently scheduled to be available in April for limited release with general availability scheduled for Q3 FY08.