Salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, introduced the new Force.com on-demand platform --- the world’s first Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Force.com features breakthrough new Visualforce technology that will empower customers, developers and ISVs to design any app, for any user, anywhere with the world's first User Interface-as-a-Service. The new Force.com platform now offers global infrastructure and services for database, logic, workflow, integration, user interface, and application exchange: the most comprehensive set of capabilities for building any application on demand.

“With Force.com, customers, developers and ISVs can choose innovation, not infrastructure,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Google, Amazon, and Apple have all shown that by revolutionizing a user interface you can revolutionize an industry. With Visualforce we’re giving developers the power to revolutionize any interface, and any industry, on demand.”

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Salesforce.com Introduces New Force.com On-Demand Platform --- World’s First Platform-As-A-Service

SAN FRANCISCO – Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce Conference – September 17, 2007 – Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today introduced the new Force.com on-demand platform --- the world’s first Platform-as-a-Service. Force.com features breakthrough new Visualforce technology that will empower customers, developers and ISVs to design any app, for any user, anywhere with the world's first User Interface-as-a-Service. The new Force.com platform now offers global infrastructure and services for database, logic, workflow, integration, user interface, and application exchange: the most comprehensive set of capabilities for building any application on demand.

“With Force.com, customers, developers and ISVs can choose innovation, not infrastructure,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Google, Amazon, and Apple have all shown that by revolutionizing a user interface you can revolutionize an industry. With Visualforce we’re giving developers the power to revolutionize any interface, and any industry, on demand.”

The gateway to any great business application is a great user interface; easy to use, powerful and designed exactly for the tasks, users and devices the application serves. A new capability of the Force.com platform, Visualforce will provide a complete framework for creating any kind of user experience, and will enable the creation of new interface designs and user interactions to be built and delivered with no software or hardware infrastructure requirements. With Visualforce, developers have unprecedented control over the look and feel of their Force.com applications enabling them to create any user experience they can imagine. From a handheld device for a sales rep in the field, to an order-entry kiosk on a manufacturing shop floor, Visualforce will enable the creation of powerful new user experiences that can be customized and delivered in real time on any screen.

The Force.com Platform: Create and Run Any Application On-Demand

Force.com delivers Platform-as-a-Service, a new way to create and deploy business apps that makes companies and developers successful by letting them focus on what their applications do, rather than the software and infrastructure to run them. By replacing the complexity of software platforms with a complete, scalable service, Force.com provides developers the fastest path to turn ideas into business impact.

Force.com Platform-as-a-Service provides the building blocks necessary to build any kind of business app, simple or sophisticated - and automatically deploy them as a service to small teams or entire enterprises. The Force.com platform gives customers the power to run multiple applications within the same Salesforce instance, allowing all of a company’s Salesforce applications to share a common security model, data model, and user interface. The multi-tenant Force.com platform encompasses a complete feature set for the creation of business applications such as an on-demand operating system, the ability to create any database on demand, a workflow engine for managing collaboration between users, the Apex Code programming language for building complex logic, the Force.com Web Services API for programmatic access, mash-ups, and integration with other applications and data, and now Visualforce for a framework to build any user interface.

Visualforce: Design and Deliver Any User Experience Anywhere As a Service

As part of the Force.com platform, Visualforce will give customers the power to design application user interfaces for any experience on any screen. Using the powerful logic and workflow intelligence provided by Apex Code, Visualforce offers the flexibility to meet the requirements of applications that feature many different types of users on a variety of devices. Visualforce uses the best of Internet technology, including HTML, AJAX and Flex, for business applications, making them as innovative and as effective as their consumer Web counterparts. Visualforce will enable the creation and delivery of any user experience, offering control over an application’s design and behavior that is only limited by the imagination.

“Visualforce is addictive,” said Jason Ouellette, Chief Architect of Appirio. “It's amazing how fast you can use it build Web apps, especially when you don't need to worry about the data layer and associated glue. It's so quick to make a change, click ‘Save’, and see it reflected in the page. It will make it substantially easier for us to develop enterprise scale applications with our customers. ”

Visualforce provides a page-based model, built on standard HTML and Web presentation technologies, and is complimented with both a component library for implementing common user interface elements, and a controller model for creating new interactions between those elements. As part of the larger Force.com platform, the user experiences created in Visualforce directly leverage the data, logic and workflow created in the other Force.com features. Visualforce features and capabilities will include:

Pages – this capability enables the design definition of an application’s user interface. This enables developers to create new pages using standard Web technologies including HTML, AJAX and Flex. Pages will allow developers to create any user experience with standard Web technologies that will be immediately familiar to any Web developer. And since Visualforce automatically detects a users' device, it will give them the ability to automatically deliver the right experience to the right device.

Components – this provides the ability to create new applications that automatically match the look and feel of Salesforce applications or easily customize and extend the Salesforce user interface to specific customer and user requirements. Customers can rapidly create a user experience by assembling existing user interface elements. Visualforce will provide the power to reuse predefined standard Salesforce and custom-designed UI components. More than 50 standard Salesforce UI elements will be available with Visualforce.

Logic Controllers - The controller enables customers to build any user interface behavior. Customers will be able to use Visualforce to quickly create a new look and feel that leverages existing application functionality. Customers can define completely new UI interactions that benefit from all the power of Apex Code. The standard controller gives customers the ability to inherit and reuse any standard Salesforce UI behavior like new, edit and save. Customers will also have powerful custom controller capabilities to define new UI behaviors using Apex Code.

Availability

Visualforce is currently scheduled to be available in developer preview for Dreamforce conference attendees. For non-conference attendees, the Visualforce developer preview is currently scheduled to be available in salesforce.com’s Q4 at http://developer.salesforce.com. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

Force.com Platform and the AppExchange

Force.com is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Force.com reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables the creation of a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond client/server computing. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to benefit the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand as thousands of salesforce.com customers have installed thousands of on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.