Scott Hemmeter: The Making of a Platform ISV
Scott Hemmeter looks at Force.com and sees an ISV business in the making. A certified public accountant turned full-service consultant, Hemmeter has used Force.com toolkits and the Force.com Web Services API to create a series of applications, which he made available free of charge on the AppExchange marketplace. When those apps developed a following, he built one that generates licensing income. Named after his company, Arrowpointe Maps has attracted a corporate following by allowing users to visualize Salesforce information on interactive MapQuest maps.
Hemmeter is now hoping that success will lead to others. "I have a lot of ideas ready to be turned into a product portfolio," he says. "My goal is to use the Force.com platform as an integral part of my company’s future—so that it's not just me at the keyboard, but a small team of employees."
Hemmeter is a notable member of the Force.com developer community. His solutions-oriented blog " Perspectives on Salesforce.com," is a well-established blog dedicated to Force.com development. He has spoken at two Dreamforce conferences and received a Developer Hero award at Dreamforce ’07.
From auditor to entrepreneur
Early in his career, Hemmeter spent a year as an auditor with Ernst and Young, followed by eight more years as a business consultant. The turning point came in 2005; he began noticing that what would take months to do on Siebel could be done in a matter of weeks with Salesforce. Realizing that software as a service (SaaS) was the future, he set off on his own, founding Arrowpointe to offer Salesforce project management, customization, and training primarily to enterprise-size clients.
Then he began to consider the possibilities of Force.com. "I first saw application development as another way to increase my visibility, then realized it would also be ideal for gaining hands-on experience with Force.com development,” he explains. “So I put myself in my clients’ shoes and asked: what kinds of applications would they want to use?"
Hemmeter’s first answer to that question
was a free-of-charge application, donated to the community, called User Adoption Dashboard, which
displays data activity over the previous 60 days. "It gained a following even within salesforce.com
and got mentioned at events as an example of what the community could produce,” he says. He
followed that with Auto vCard, which automatically creates vCard contact information for export to
personal information managers. Published in February 2006, the application has garnered a five-star
user rating and continues to be one of the top AppExchange downloads. Other free Arrowpointe
Force.com applications include Info Center, which provides a mechanism for publishing messages,
FAQs, and hyperlinks, and a mashup between Salesforce and Google Maps.
The mashup lead to Hemmeter's first commercial product, Arrowpointe Maps, which generates an interactive MapQuest map based on Salesforce data. "My customers use it for planning sales visits and campaigns, and for evaluating the demographic results," he says. He has made continuous improvements, adding features and attracting a steady stream of new licensees.
Force.com skill set keeps growing
Along with new customers, Hemmeter adds new Force.com technologies to his skill set. "Initially, I didn’t have much background in Web technologies. But I've used each successive application to learn something new, including the Force.com PHP and AJAX toolkits, and, most recently, Apex code.
“I couldn't have built Arrowpointe Maps without the PHP toolkit,” Hemmeter says. "I've gotten pretty good with the language, but I haven’t had the time to get to the next level, where I can address the API directly. The toolkit bridges the gap by translating the functionality of the API into terms I can easily understand, which in turn frees me from having to dig into the details of the API. As a result, I’ve been able to do some things that go well beyond the core API calls. For example, Arrowpointe Maps uses the API to extract metadata on different customer Salesforce configurations. That lets me provide not just a generic user interface, but a tailored one that better matches each installation's needs.”
Hemmeter is now looking at the Force.com platform to eliminate the cost of the hosting services required for a PHP application. "I would love to migrate everything to Apex code and Visualforce, which would mean virtually zero infrastructure costs," he says. "That's my goal over the next 18 months
Hemmeter advises new developers to sign up for the free Salesforce Developer Edition Account. "It’s limited in the amount of data it can store, but it’s a full version and it never expires.” He also suggests reading the two Force.com development books: Creating On-Demand Applications and the Force.com Cookbook. “As for community involvement, I’ve found that the more you give away, the more you get back. I’ve donated applications and code snippets, given advice where I can, and put hours into keeping up my blog. But the rewards—in terms of visibility, and frankly, increased business, have more than compensated for my time. It’s really the open source mentality: when you share, good things happen.”
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