Enterprise application integration made much easier

A comprehensive array of technologies built on top of the Force.com API dramatically simplifies enterprise application integration. Whether you need to connect your Sales Cloud to SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, or another on-premises or cloud-based application, CRM integration now takes much less effort than ever before. Force.com lets you integrate to literally anything—free of system incompatibilities, technical roadblocks, and the restrictions of vendor lock-in.

Application integration simplicity is a major advantage for our partners as well as our users: A single, native Force.com solution is all that’s required to serve every salesforce.com customer.

CRM integration: Choose the best route for your needs

With Force.com, you can mix and match various proven paths to enterprise application integration. These choices give you the flexibility to best meet the technical, business, and user needs of your organization. As a result, you can complete your application integration in less time and realize greater value from the systems you’ve already invested in.

• Native connectors to popular office tools. For the greatest sales impact and widest adoption of Salesforce CRM, you’ll want CRM integration with your everyday office productivity tools such as Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes. The proven, native connectors that come with Force.com make these application integrations a snap.
• Native connectors for Oracle and SAP. Are decades of data siloed in your legacy systems? Do you keep your financials in Oracle and customer master data in SAP? If so, you’re not alone. Many organizations are searching for solutions to these drags on user productivity, process efficiency, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, the bottom line. To simplify enterprise application integration and ensure seamless data exchange, salesforce.com supplies native connectors for both Oracle and SAP. Once deployed, they provide bidirectional customer data synchronization plus prebuilt customer-master integration templates for a consistent customer view across all systems. And to speed time to value for routine ERP integration projects, you also get packaged transformation of customer records.
• Application integration middleware. All popular middleware platforms and solutions work smoothly with Force.com. Browse the AppExchange under Integration and Data Management and you’ll discover more than 160 certified, pre-packaged partner solutions for enterprise application integration between Salesforce CRM and widely used back-office and legacy systems. These solutions provide the flexibility and predictability you need to get the most from Salesforce CRM while maximizing your existing investment in SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Quicken, Microsoft Dynamics, and many more. Choose from prebuilt ERP connectors, middleware and SOA platforms, integration appliances, mashups and composites, computer telephony integration (CTI), and ETL and data integration.
• Application integration services and solutions. Visit the AppExchange under Integration and Data Management, and you’ll also find more than 75 technology partners offering deep enterprise application integration experience and a track record of hundreds of successful Salesforce CRM integration projects. With certified solutions to support any application integration strategy, our partner ecosystem lets you shift the CRM integration burden to seasoned domain experts and ensures your access to the latest technologies and application integration best practices.
• Preintegrated apps, components, and extensions. Want to extend Salesforce CRM integration to further automate and simplify your processes and workflows? Would you like to add functionality specific to your industry? How about expanding your Sales Cloud into realms beyond CRM, by integrating diverse business applications that handle risk management, finance and administration, business intelligence, and lots more? It’s all waiting for you on the AppExchange: 800-plus applications and components, to be precise. And because each and every one is preintegrated and many are 100 percent native on Force.com, application integration is as easy as a single mouse click.
• Developer toolkits. For do-it-yourself CRM integrations—and enterprise application integration in general—Force.com includes support for all major development tools and IDEs, such as .NET, Java, PHP, the AJAX Toolkit, and many more.

Force.com application integration points range from off-the-shelf native ERP connectors to Web services, email, syndication feeds, and HTTP-based REST callouts. The Force.com API enables integration with other languages and environments, providing the basis for in-browser mashups.

Hands-on developers can call Web services right from the Force.com platform or expose classes on the platform as Web service end-points. You can also work with external HTTP end-points, react to incoming email messages, and have automated outbound messages sent when various events occur. With just a little more sophistication, you can perform enterprise application integration with the SOAP-based Force.com API.

Application integration with other clouds

Use the Force.com platform to tap into the power and reach of the most popular cloud services and social networks, such as Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google AppEngine, and Twitter:

• Connecting with Amazon S3 and EC2. You can easily integrate Force.com and Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the Force.com for Amazon Web Services toolkit. Blending native access to the AWS Simple Storage System with Amazon Machine Images (AMI) and an authentication framework, the toolkit makes these Amazon services directly available to Force.com. You can access and manipulate S3 objects within the Java-like Force.com code (Apex). You can then launch application integration with EC2.
• Combine Facebook with Force.com. For CRM integration with Facebook, all you need is our free set of tools and services: Force.com for Facebook. Right from within Force.com code, you can use the Facebook APIs to build user experiences and social graph apps that link to the database, application integration, logic, and the Force.com pages (Visualforce) features of Force.com sites.