Salesforce.com Announces Salesforce SOA - First Software as Service SOA Solution

New Salesforce SOA will deliver SOA as a service, heralding the end of

software for intelligent web services integration

Powerful new capability of Apex, the world's first on-demand programming

language

Unveiled at Salesforce Developer Conference, Salesforce SOA extends the

capability of developers to focus on innovation, not infrastructure

    SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce
 Developer Conference -- Salesforce.com ( CRM), the market and
 technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced
 Salesforce SOA, taking service oriented architectures on demand for the
 first time. Salesforce SOA will deliver SOA as a service, heralding the end
 of complex and expensive software- based SOA solutions for intelligent Web
 services integration. Salesforce SOA is a powerful new capability of the
 Apex programming language that will allow developers to focus on
 innovation, not infrastructure, while building a new class of on-demand
 applications. Salesforce SOA was unveiled and demonstrated today at the
 Salesforce Developer Conference.
     (http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO )
     "The journey to SOA shouldn't be slowed by the baggage of legacy
 software," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "In 1999,
 salesforce.com enabled customer CRM success with our award-winning
 Salesforce applications delivered on-demand via the Internet. Salesforce
 SOA will radically accelerate the kinds of applications that are available
 on demand by continuing to remove the barriers of software infrastructure
 that have been imposed by SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft."
     "The new Salesforce SOA capabilities in Apex will streamline the
 development required to create new kinds of enterprise applications," said
 Glenn Wilson, co-founder and CEO, CRMFusion. "With Apex, we were able to
 prototype a new version of our on-demand application in less than three
 weeks. Our new Apex-built applications will further enhance the success
 we've achieved with salesforce.com and our more than 750 customers on the
 AppExchange to date."
     "Many companies have invested considerable time and expense chasing the
 promise of software-based SOA," said David Linthicum, CEO, Linthicum Group,
 LLC., a noted SOA author. "Salesforce SOA will marry SaaS and SOA to make
 possible new kinds of business processes and applications. Developers, IT
 departments and CIOs will be able to harness business logic spanning
 multiple applications to mashup and create thousands of new applications."
     Salesforce SOA: Enabling SaaS and SOA
     Software-based SOA has required deploying and maintaining costly
 software and infrastructure, spurring lengthy, high-risk implementations
 that generate mixed results. Salesforce SOA will enable SOA as a service,
 run on salesforce.com's on-demand platform, removing the cost and
 complexity associated with deploying and managing infrastructure.
     Salesforce SOA will provide the ability to mashup salesforce.com's
 multi-tenant on-demand service with enterprise workflow and business
 processes to enable new kinds of enterprise applications on demand. As a
 new capability of the Apex programming language, Salesforce SOA will enable
 SOA-based business processes, such as enterprise applications, to be
 created, maintained and leveraged on demand. SOA business processes will
 become virtual and sharable, and benefit from the scalability and agility
 of the on-demand model. With Salesforce SOA, developers will be able to:
      -- Use Apex to build SOA applications that integrate to Web services from
         billing, inventory or order entry systems.
 
      -- Call out to internal Web services such as Oracle Financials and SAP
         Order Management, and external Web services such as FedEx, Hoovers and
         Yahoo!.
 
      -- Build rich applications on-demand for any business process
     The Salesforce Platform, Apex Programming Language and Salesforce SOA
     The multi-tenant Salesforce Platform encompasses a complete feature set
 for building business applications such as models and objects to manage
 data, a workflow engine for managing collaboration between users, a user
 interface model to handle forms and other interactions, the Salesforce API
 for programmatic access, mash-ups, and integration with other applications
 and data, and the Apex programming language.
     Developers can use the Apex programming language to do everything from
 creating custom components, customizing and modifying existing
 salesforce.com code and creating triggers, all the way to building and
 executing complex business logic, run entirely on salesforce.com's
 multi-tenant service. Apex is a Java-like development language that is
 secure, easy and fast, and will be familiar to any Java programmer.
 Anything built using Apex can be made available as a Web service and is
 accessible via SOAP and XML standards. Features and capabilities of the
 Apex programming language include:
      -- Apex event model -- Apex can be tied to the execution of the platform,
         enabling developers to exert fine-grained control over an application.
         Developers can use Apex to customize the core features and
         functionality of their Salesforce deployments for their unique
         business needs. Apex also delivers the power to reprogram any
         component of Salesforce, such as Campaigns, Cases or Opportunities, or
         build entirely new components completely from scratch.
 
      -- Transaction control -- Because Apex is closely bound to Salesforce
         data, developers can readily add transactional features to their
         applications. For example, if one user is referencing a field while
         another is trying to delete it, the system is aware of the conflict.
         Apex also features data commits and rollbacks, which are especially
         important when working across multiple objects.
 
      -- Packaging, re-use and Web services. Apex uses a packaging model
         similar to that of Java, in which reusable packages of code can be
         invoked from each other or from within triggers. Significantly, any
         method defined in a package can optionally be automatically exposed as
         a Web service, and thus can be invoked via the Web services API or
         directly through the AJAX toolkit.
 
      -- Performance, scalability and upgrades. Because Apex runs on demand,
         developers enjoy the benefits of the scalability, reliability and
         availability of salesforce.com's industry-leading service.
         Applications potentially run faster because a single query can obtain
         information from multiple objects. When newer versions of Salesforce
         and the Apex itself are introduced, code is never rendered obsolete.
         Salesforce.com ensures backward compatibility so that code continues
         to operate without modification.
 
      -- Apex and the AppExchange.  Apex can be packaged alongside custom
         objects, S-controls and other platform features, allowing developers
         to redistribute their Apex-built apps via the AppExchange directory.
     For more information on the Apex programming language and Salesforce
 SOA, please visit: http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Salesforce_SOA.
     Salesforce Developer Network: Tools and Resources to Develop On Demand
     To spur development with Apex, salesforce.com also is providing
 comprehensive developer resources, at its Wiki-based developer site,
 http://developer.salesforce.com. The Salesforce Developer Network provides
 the community, tools and resources to let developers use the Apex
 programming language to build new applications for the AppExchange. Now any
 developer in the world -- with access to just a Web browser and Internet
 connection -- can harness the power of the world's most popular
 multi-tenant platform to create new applications and mashups from scratch.
 With toolkits and resources for most popular development languages and
 environments, including AJAX, Eclipse, Flex, Java, .NET and PHP, developers
 can also combine those applications with other Web services to create new
 business mashups, allowing developers, ISVs and IT organizations to easily
 leverage The Business Web in their projects and offerings.
     The AppExchange Directory
     More than 225,000 test drives and more than 26,000 application installs
 at more than 10,000 customers have taken place of the more than 575
 applications that are now available on the salesforce.com AppExchange, the
 world's first on-demand directory, found at
 http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.
     Pricing and Availability
     The Apex programming language is now available as a developer preview
 at http://developer.salesforce.com.
     The Salesforce SOA capability of Apex is currently scheduled to be
 available as a developer preview in August 2007.
     The Apex programming language is currently scheduled to be generally
 available in December 2007.
     The Apex programming language will be free of charge for developers and
 partners to build the next generation of business applications.
     About salesforce.com
     Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand
 business services. The company's Salesforce suite of on-demand CRM
 applications allows customers to manage and share all of their sales,
 support, marketing and partner information on-demand. The Salesforce
 Platform, the world's first on-demand platform, enables customers,
 developers and partners to build powerful new on-demand applications that
 extend beyond CRM to deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy and The Business
 Web across the enterprise. The Salesforce Platform allows applications to
 be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via
 salesforce.com's AppExchange directory, available at
 http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange. Customers can also take advantage of
 Successforce, salesforce.com's world-class training, support, consulting
 and best practices offerings.
     As of April 30, 2007, salesforce.com manages customer information for
 approximately 32,300 customers including ABN AMRO, America Online (AOL),
 Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel,
 Staples and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced
 in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently
 available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who
 purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions
 based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has
 headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades
 on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more
 information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call
 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
     Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of salesforce.com, and Apex,
 AppExchange, The Business Web, IdeaExchange and Successforce are trademarks
 of salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be
 trademarks of their respective owners.
 
 

SOURCE Salesforce.com, Inc.