Salesforce Launches Salesforce1 Lightning Connect, The Fastest, Easiest Way to Integrate Any Data Source with Salesforce

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today launched Salesforce1 Lightning Connect, the fastest, easiest way to integrate any data source with Salesforce. Lightning Connect is a new breed of real-time integration that unleashes the full power of the Salesforce1 Platform on data stored in legacy back-office systems. Integration vendors, including Informatica, Jitterbit, MuleSoft, Progress Software, SnapLogic and SoftwareAG, have built an extensive library of adaptors for Lightning Connect, making integration with Salesforce easy, in just a few clicks. Leading companies such as Brown-Forman and HD Supply Facilities Maintenance are breathing life into their back-office systems with the Salesforce1 Platform.

Comments on the News

• "Salesforce1 Lightning Connect is the fastest way to integrate any data into Salesforce," said Mike Rosenbaum, EVP and GM Salesforce1 Platform, Salesforce. "Now customers can extend all the benefits of the Salesforce1 Platform to all of their enterprise data—whether it's stored in Salesforce or another system."
• "I want IT focus on delivering innovations, not complex integration," said Toby Lester, VP Technology, Architecture and Innovation, Brown-Forman. "With Salesforce1 Lightning Connect, we can continue to change the role of IT by eliminating the pain of building integration after integration and allowing IT to focus on building the apps needed to keep everyone productive."
• "For years, enterprises have faced the challenge of creating real-time connections across siloed applications," said Chris Purpura, VP and GM of Cloud Integration, MuleSoft. "With Salesforce1 Lightning Connect and MuleSoft, Salesforce customers can gain real-time access to data from any data source."
• "As customers move more critical business apps to the cloud, they're looking to easily connect them to siloed legacy data," said Ronen Schwartz, VP and GM, Informatica Cloud. "The Informatica Cloud OData solution for Salesforce1 Lightning Connect enables Salesforce administrators, IT and business analysts to quickly incorporate any external application data with Salesforce."

Connecting Siloed Back-Office Data to Today's Mobile Front-Office

Data integration has long been a pain point for CIOs and IT departments, yet it is essential for companies to run their business. These integrations can be complex, expensive and take up to a year to build. In fact, according to a recent survey of CIOs, 48 percent said data integration is their #1 pain point¹. Current approaches to data integration, such as manual file load, FTP, point-to-point or enterprise service bus, are limited in scope or overly complex to implement. According to Gartner, "more organizations are demanding that data be delivered or processed in real-time to match the speed of their business. They expect reduced latency and real-time data delivery. Data integration technology, including the use of in-memory capability to federate data, is becoming the key to achieving these data delivery and latency goals²." How can companies create real-time data integration in just a few clicks?

New Salesforce1 Lightning Connect—Bringing Legacy Data Back to Life
Today Salesforce is launching the new Lightning Connect, a new breed of real-time integration that will change the way companies access and connect with data stored in legacy systems. Unlike other integration tools, Lightning Connect can be configured in minutes with point-and-click tools and does not copy and store outdated data in Salesforce. Lightning Connect is:

• Fast: Integration can now be completely code-free, allowing any user to quickly connect data with just a few clicks and not spend months or years on integrations. For example, sales organizations can bring order data from external apps into the Salesforce Sales Cloud1, enabling sales executives to check order status on the go from the Salesforce1 Mobile App.
• Real-time: Data is not copied and saved in multiple places. With Lightning Connect, business users gain access to up-to-date information, so they can get on with running their business, and IT can stop managing multiple data silos and complex integration projects. For example, with Lightning Connect, companies can process customer returns and see them in the Salesforce Service Cloud1 in real-time, enabling them to support every customer with ease.
• Extensible: Lightning Connect unleashes the full power of the Salesforce1 Platform and makes it easy to take data that is outside of Salesforce and treat it like it is in Salesforce. Users can search across external data, use it in Visualforce and Apex code to build custom apps, and relate it to customer data within Salesforce. For example, marketing teams can build customer loyalty apps on Heroku and make data from the app available in Salesforce.

New Lightning Connect Integration Ecosystem
The demand to connect legacy data to Salesforce has grown as customers use an increasing number of external data sources in the Salesforce ecosystem. Built on OData, an open data access protocol, Lightning Connect is the first Salesforce integration solution built on industry standards. Leading integration providers like Informatica, Jitterbit, MuleSoft, Progress Software, SnapLogic and SoftwareAG have expanded their solutions to include support for OData and Lightning Connect, making integration with Salesforce easier and more powerful with real-time data.

New Heroku External Objects for Salesforce—Leveraging Lightning Connect for Customer Apps
The new Heroku External Objects for Salesforce allows companies to build modern customer-facing apps, using technologies such as Node, Ruby, PHP and Java on Heroku, and connect them to Salesforce. Heroku External Objects for Salesforce makes app data, operational data, customer data—any data in Heroku Postgres—available within Salesforce. The simple point-and-click configuration makes it easy to combine the power of Lightning Connect with the scale and open standards capabilities of Heroku.

Leading Global Companies Build Apps Faster with the Salesforce1 Platform, the World's #1 PaaS
With the Salesforce1 Platform, the world's #1 PaaS, companies can transform IT departments into centers of innovation and leapfrog the competition. With more than four million apps and 1.8 million developers, the Salesforce1 Platform is the trusted and proven platform for innovative companies around the world. Companies like Brown-Forman and HD Supply Facilities Maintenance are building apps faster on the Salesforce1 Platform to help every user move at the speed of business. The more than 4,100 customers who participated in a recent study reported the Salesforce1 Platform delivered 52 percent faster application deployment, 50 percent faster new application design, 52 percent faster application configuration and 42 percent decrease in IT cost.³

Pricing and Availability

• Salesforce1 Platform and Salesforce1 Lightning Connect are now generally available.
• Salesforce1 Platform is included with all user licenses of Salesforce CRM.
• Salesforce1 Lightning Connect is priced per data source and monthly subscription pricing starts at $4,000 per month.
• Heroku External Objects for Salesforce is generally available now as part of Heroku Connect and pricing is based on resources and usage.

Additional Information

• Learn more about Salesforce1 Lightning Connect: http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2014/11/integration-connecting-not-copying-data.html
• Learn more about Salesforce1 Lightning: www.salesforce.com/lightning
• Like Salesforce on Facebook: http://facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow @Salesforce on Twitter: http://twitter.com/salesforce

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit :www.salesforce.com.

"Safe harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:  This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to future products and features. The achievement or success of the matters covered by such forward-looking statements involves risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize, or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, the company's results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. Further information on factors that could affect the company's financial and other results is included in the reports on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K and in other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including the company's most recent Form 10Q. These documents are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of the company's website atwww.salesforce.com/investor. Salesforce.com, inc. assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

¹Salesforce Research conducted July – August 2014 by an independent third-party Confirmit. Sample Size = 564 respondents / 1,801 responses. Data shown is % of respondents.
²Gartner, The State of Data Integration: Current Practices and Evolving Trends, Eric Thoo, Ted Friedman, Mark A. Beyer, 03 April 2014.
³Source: Salesforce  Customer Relationship Survey conducted March 2014 - May 2014, by an independent third-party, Confirmit Inc., on 4,100+ customers randomly selected.  Response sizes per question vary.

SOURCE Salesforce

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