Salesforce.com Unveils Chatter Free

With Chatter Free, companies can now accelerate enterprise-wide social collaboration at no additional cost

Using the viral invitation model popularized by Facebook, any Salesforce user can now invite colleagues to collaborate with Salesforce Chatter

In less than five months more than 60,000 companies have deployed Salesforce Chatter including Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Kelly Services, and Pandora

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salesforce.com

Dec 07, 2010, 07:55 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- DREAMFORCE 2010 --Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today launched Chatter Free, a new edition of Salesforce Chatter that is completely free. Using the social invitation model popularized by Facebook, now any Salesforce user can invite colleagues to collaborate with Salesforce Chatter. Chatter Free will accelerate adoption of social collaboration throughout the enterprise.

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Chatter is the industry's first enterprise collaboration app and platform. Leveraging the social features popularized by Facebook and Twitter -- such as profiles, status updates and real-time feeds -- Chatter lets employees "follow" documents, people, business processes and application data. The result is a new level of productivity that crosses departments and organizational barriers.

Chatter is yet the latest example of the shift to Cloud 2, the next generation of enterprise cloud computing that is social, mobile and real- time. Cloud 2 started with consumer social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which people use every day to connect and collaborate around what matters most to them in their personal lives. Until Chatter, companies could not leverage Cloud 2 capabilities within their enterprise. Now, all of salesforce.com's more than 87,200 customers can harness the same immediacy that epitomizes these consumer applications, coupled with the trust, security and scalability required by the enterprise. With Chatter, companies benefit from the tremendous productivity gains that come with enterprise social collaboration.

Overwhelming Industry Response to Salesforce Chatter

Since becoming generally available five months ago, more than 60,000 companies, including Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Kelly Services and Pandora have deployed Chatter. The breakthrough technology has also allowed salesforce.com to expand beyond sales organizations, and bring a new wave of collaboration to employees across the enterprise. Companies including Dell and Reed Exhibitions have already rolled out Chatter enterprise-wide.

Chatter Free: Social Collaboration for Every Employee

Chatter Free allows enterprises to extend the social collaboration technology to every employee within the organization. Chatter Free provides enterprise-wide social collaboration capabilities, including:

  • Profiles
  • Status Updates
  • Real-Time Feeds
  • File Sharing
  • Groups
  • Filters
  • Invitations
  • Chatter Mobile
  • Chatter Desktop

Chatter Free joins the existing Chatter offerings, including Salesforce Chatter and Chatter Plus. Salesforce Chatter enables existing salesforce.com license holders to harness the full power of the breakthrough enterprise social collaboration technology. Companies that want to extend that power to additional employees can use Chatter Plus. Chatter Plus enables users to collaborate around business data by "following" a range of critical information, such as accounts, cases and business processes. If companies want to enable non-salesforce.com users with even greater social collaboration capabilities such as the ability to follow accounts, contacts, dashboards, reports, calendars, activities or employ custom objects and the Chatter API they should look to Chatter Plus.

Chatter Free: Fueled by Facebook-like Social Invitations

With Chatter Free, salesforce.com is using the same social invitation model popularized by Facebook. Now any Salesforce user can invite any colleague -- even those who aren't already Salesforce users -- to collaborate with Chatter. By its nature, this social invitation creates a network effect, as the pool of Chatter users widens and deepens across a company. And because Chatter is built on the trusted Force.com platform, enterprises can ensure that employees view only what they are authorized to see.

Comments on the News

  • "The industry's reception of Salesforce Chatter has blown away our expectations," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "The fact that more than 60,000 enterprises have deployed Chatter within the first five months is amazing and the Chatter Free social invites are going to take Chatter enterprise-wide."
  • "Kelly Services and its more than 8,000 employees provide workforce solutions around the world," said Joe Drouin, CIO, Kelly Services. "Chatter has transformed the way our 1,500 sales and service reps work, creating visibility into activities and enabling an unprecedented level of engagement within these groups. We want to do this now across the entire company; with Chatter Free, we're able to include the rest of our workforce, including our globally dispersed employees in operations and in functions such as IT, finance and legal into the conversation. This will greatly accelerate productivity across our global operations."
  • "Salesforce Chatter has been transformative in how business value can be derived from social technology," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research Group. "With salesforce.com embracing the social-invitation model that helped Facebook reach half a billion users, Chatter Free will unlock productivity across the workplace for customers. It may also be the seminal offering that enables salesforce.com to create deeper relationships than ever before with its customers."

Salesforce Chatter Pricing and Availability

  • Salesforce Chatter is now generally available and included for free with all paying user licenses of Salesforce CRM and Force.com.
  • Chatter Plus user licenses are available for customers using Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition for $15 per user, per month.
  • Chatter Free is now generally available to all employees of paying salesforce.com customers at no charge.
  • Customers who purchase salesforce.com technologies should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

Additional Resources

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the trusted enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, the company's Force.com platform and apps (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate. Salesforce.com's cloud offerings include:

Salesforce.com offers the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing. As of October 31, 2010, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 87,200 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 may not be 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.

SOURCE salesforce.com