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    Force.com sets its Sites on Microsoft

    Steve Gillmor
    Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
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    Steve Gillmor is a technology commentator, editor, and producer in the enterprise technology space. He is Head of Technical Media Strategy at salesforce.com and a TechCrunch contributing editor. Gillmor previously worked with leading musical artists including Paul Butterfield, David Sanborn, and members of The Band after an early career as a record producer and filmmaker with Columbia Records’ Firesign Theatre.... → Learn More


    Salesforce’s DreamForce developer conference opens Monday morning with the announcement of a new Force.com Sites service. Sites is a new business for Salesforce, potentially extending the thousands of Force.com applications by pushing application data to the Web over Salesforce servers. The new service leverages Force.com’s VisualForce UI construction tools as well as Force.com’s logic, security, integration, and customization services.

    While this is more a point upgrade to the platform in terms of revenue and customer acquisition than a major transition, it does signal the willingness to expand Force.com’s cloud into hybrid applications that span both internal enterprise customers and the customers of those applications. In doing so, Salesforce becomes even more of a channel for larger cloud players such as Google and Amazon, and even Microsoft to the extent that Force.com developers are free to integrate services such as Mesh and even Silverlight.

    Although Marc Benioff dismisses such an alliance, he’ll have to work fast to expand Force.com outward as Microsoft comes after him from the outside in. Fertile ground may lie in harnessing Google apps and realtime services to populate Sites-enabled applications with smart information services based on targeted user behavior derived from Gmail, Google Reader, IM, and micromessaging. Salesforce can provide tomorrow’s Azure services today while using fear of Microsoft overwhelming the industry again to encourage Google and other RIA cloud players such as Adobe to federate around Salesforce as a rallying point for the enterprise.

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    • Andy

      > Salesforce can provide tomorrow’s Azure services today

      That’s perhaps a slightly rash comment. Their platform is highly proprietary, and lacks the full power of .NET which Azure will give. The comparison should instead perhaps be with Dynamics Online, with which Microsoft have confidently undercut Salesforce on price (though lacks all Salesforce’s features).

      Even Microsoft’s offerings look open compared with a walled garden like Salesforce?! But I do give them great credit for providing a clever and user friendly CRM platform that’s available now.

    • Harish

      I wish this post was more detailed. It is more like a press release not a blog post.

    • Mike

      As a SalesForce.com user (power user of CRM), I can honestly say it is a fairly worthless product. I find it very useless and seriously wonder why people like it. I have used several platforms and in reality they are just ACT! on the web, with group support.

      SalesForce.com has not made me one bit more productive.

    • brian

      Azure, Office for Web…all these recently announcements from Microsoft is fairly ambitious. If they maintain a good quality (and just not think of minting money), it might quite work. I have a feeling MS might succeed big time. Except for Google/Apple, I do not see any threat from anybody else whatsoever.

      http://www.livbit.com

    • Adam

      @Harish: i was thinking the same thing

    • forcenot

      Can you transform a station wagon into a sportscar into a minivan using same azel..no. Salesforce product is half baked and in this economy…why are they taking their eyes off the ball?????

    • Harold Goth

      Good point. Chase too many rabbits you catch none of them. Chase one and you are always most certain to catch it.

    • www.iboozi.com

      Why we are commenting here if we haven’t any reason?

    • http://www.CoolProducts.com Cool Products

      I would definitely like to know more about this, but this post is very vague. After reading the comments though, it does not look like I need to waste any time researching this product.

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    • Alex

      Let me get this straight, if MS “..maintain a good quality …it might quite work.” ???

      Brilliant.

    • http://www.wecando.biz Ian Hendry

      I agree with the assertions that Salesforce.com is chasing too many rabbits. In my opinion it doesn’t do CRM especially well and should have got that game moved on before running off to start another. Their churn on the core offerings is pretty high.

      The only real area where Salesforce,com innovates is marketing spend. That got them the users they have today, but the problem is the ones they have don’t really care too much about the rest of the stuff.

      Ian Hendry
      CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
      http://www.wecando.biz

    • Shawn

      I also found this article to be really difficult to read.

    • http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/customer-relationship-experience-the-strategy-behind-salesforce-sites/ Customer Relationship Experience: The Strategy Behind Salesforce Sites? « SmoothSpan Blog

      [...] these outwardly facing applications and the connections with other Cloud platforms is causing some like TechCrunchIT to speculate that the announcement means closer ties with Microsoft and Google.  While Salesforce [...]

    • b

      How are they charging for this? That will determine success/failure.

    • Bryce

      We are actually in the process of moving off Salesforce to Dynamics. Salesforce has some nice features sales people, but as a platform and CRM application it just comes up way short in comparison.
      Also we are just paying way too much for Salesforce, and the API and storage limites are far too low for our requirements.

    • http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/12/07/forcecom-google-app-engine-cloud-relationship-management/ Force.com + Google App Engine = Cloud Relationship Management

      [...] a month ago Salesforce announced a new Sites service, which allows Force.com customers to host not only internal Salesforce and App Force applications [...]

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    • http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/06/14/salesforcecom-now-lets-companies-build-both-apps-and-sites-in-the-cloud/ Salesforce.com Now Lets Companies Build Both Apps And Sites In The Cloud

      [...] and entrepreneurs a budget friendly way to use Salesforce’s platform. The company originally announced the Force.com Sites capability last winter, signaling Salesforce’s ambitions to expand [...]

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