Salesforce.com Launches the Private Beta of Salesforce Chatter, Bringing Enterprise Collaboration Into the Era of Cloud Computing and Social Networking

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing   (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/) company, today announced the private beta program for Salesforce Chatter, the industry's first real-time enterprise collaboration application and platform. One hundred industry innovators from around the globe, including Reed Exhibitions, Schumacher Group, and TransUnion were chosen to empower their employees to "know it now" through enterprise collaboration in the program. In the private beta, customers will also be able to realize anytime, anywhere access to Chatter's real-time feeds via BlackBerry or iPhone mobile devices.

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In the past, companies have struggled with the problem of understanding everything that's going on within their organization and they are constantly missing out on critical information because collaboration tools make users do all the work. With Chatter, salesforce.com will empower companies to break free from the cost and complexity of legacy software such as SharePoint and Lotus Notes. Chatter is easy to use and delivers relevant information to each user based on the people, documents, and apps they decide to follow. While similar to the look of popular consumer social networking sites, Chatter is the first ever trusted, secure enterprise application that allows companies to collaborate in real time through profiles, feeds and status updates.

Comments on the News

• "The end of legacy collaboration software like Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Lotus Notes is here," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "Consumer Internet services like Facebook and Twitter have shown us better ways to collaborate. Using the same social features and real-time feeds popularized by these consumer services, Salesforce Chatter changes the game for collaboration in the enterprise - all without the cost and complexity of software."
• "Organizations of all sizes are concerned about how to capitalize on today's social networking to support their day-to-day business requirements," according to Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and Founder of the SaaS Showplace. "Salesforce Chatter enables organizations to harness the power of cloud-based collaboration so they can more easily share and utilize real-time information to achieve their corporate objectives in a secure fashion."
• "Legacy collaboration software makes you do all the work," said Jon Green, vice president of technology, Den-Mat. "We see a better way for collaboration in our enterprise. With Salesforce Chatter, we can instantly realize real-time collaboration in our company without the cost and complexity of software."
• "Salesforce Chatter is the killer app we've been waiting for," said Dominic Shine, Group CIO, Reed Exhibitions. "With Salesforce Chatter, we can empower our employees with real-time collaboration to know it now and be more productive."
• "Salesforce Chatter enables a new level of collaboration for our sales and service reps, and real-time awareness for TransUnion leadership," said Matthew Brady, director of Sales Automation, TransUnion. "We view Salesforce Chatter as a potential game changer because it presents great promise in our drive toward deeper customer engagement and 360-degree visibility into those relationships."

The Chatter private beta will allow customers to introduce real-time collaboration within their enterprise and provide feedback to salesforce.com on the technology experience before it is generally available. One hundred companies from various industries, including financial services, manufacturing, high tech and professional services were selected for the program. Participants were chosen based on their existing salesforce.com technology deployments and potential Chatter use cases.

Salesforce Chatter Changes the Game for Enterprise Collaboration

Salesforce.com unveiled Chatter at Dreamforce '09 to an overwhelmingly positive industry reception. Since then, salesforce.com's community of more than 67,900 customers has clamored to learn firsthand how they can change the game for real-time collaboration within their organization. Chatter will empower people to "know it now" through innovative, real-time, social features which will include:

• Profiles: Employees can create business profiles with professional information like personal contact information, area of expertise, and work history. Using the profiles feature, colleagues can quickly identify individuals who can help contribute to the success of their project or task using relevant, context-specific information.
• Status Updates: Colleagues can break the cycle of chasing critical information. Status updates enable employees to automatically keep colleagues informed with dynamic alerts and prevent duplication of effort. Through this feature, employees can even share files and links to provide additional context around a project, sales deal or customer support case.
• Chatter Feeds: With real-time feeds, employees can stay on top of everything that matters to them with personalized updates from people, applications and documents. Teams can work together on fast-moving issues such as sales leads, customer projects, and marketing campaigns with greater efficiency.
• Application Updates: With Chatter, all relevant status updates from a customer's Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or custom Force.com application are represented in the feed. The apps now have the ability to post status updates that can automatically flag time-sensitive developments like a new sales opportunity or change in customer contact which empowers employees to harness the real-time power of Chatter to do better business.
• Document Sharing: Employees no longer have to search through in-boxes or on file servers for important business documents or content. With Chatter, they can instantly and securely search the Chatter feed to access, share and even download the material via an Internet browser.
• Security and Social Sharing: Chatter enables employees to closely manage who has access to what information. Built on the trusted Force.com platform, the secure sharing model keeps private information safe. Unlike consumer social networking sites, Chatter is built for the enterprise on salesforce.com's trusted and proven multi-tenant architecture.
• Social Networks: Companies can leverage the wealth of information contained in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to establish stronger bonds with their community of customers, partners and employees. The Chatter social networks feature allows companies to pull in relevant information from social media about the company and its customers to gain insights into customer satisfaction and to share expertise with the community. For example, employees can monitor the Twitter conversation about a particular prospect or competitor from within Chatter.
• AppExchange: Any app listed on salesforce.com's AppExchange, the cloud computing solution marketplace, will now be social and can stream updates to the Chatter feed. Since they are delivered on the Force.com platform, developers can build or enhance cloud applications to use Chatter profiles, real-time streams, and application programming interfaces (APIs).
• Mobile and Desktop: Chatter helps companies maintain constant connection with their apps. With the mobile and desktop feature, customers can remain productive and in the know regardless of their location on their favorite mobile device whether it's a BlackBerry or iPhone.

Salesforce Chatter Delivers the Enterprise Collaboration Platform

Industry excitement for Chatter accelerates with more than 200,000 Force.com developers eager to innovate on the industry's first enterprise collaboration platform. Chatter will include a rich set of pre-built social components that can be used to easily create new collaboration apps or enhance existing apps on the Force.com platform. With the release of Chatter, the more than 135,000 custom apps built on the Force.com platform may become social and collaborative. All of the social features that make Chatter a game-changing technology will also be available as part of the Chatter collaboration platform. This includes Chatter feeds, status updates, custom app updates, profiles, and content sharing.

Pricing and Availability

• Salesforce Chatter is currently scheduled to be generally available in calendar year 2010. Customers who purchase salesforce.com technologies should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.
• Salesforce Chatter will be included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com.
• A new Chatter Edition is expected to be available for $50 per user per month and will include Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content and Force.com.

Supporting Resources

• For more information, please visit http://www.salesforce.com/chatter
• Follow salesforce.com on Twitter @salesforce and join the conversation with #chatter

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The company's portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers across sales, marketing and service. The company's Force.com platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) helps customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing.  

As of October 31, 2009, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 67,900 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, 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.

Copyright (c) 2010 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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