Salesforce.com has changed the way we think about application development in the era of Business Web 2.0. Generally available since late last year, AppExchange the on-demand application deployment platform, now hosts hundreds of thousand of users and is the home for dozens of vertically oriented utilities solving real-world business problems.
AppExchange is a sandbox where application developers (and power users) can extend the functionality of the core features of Salesforce.com. AppExchange applications can be deployed to the enterprise and are made available to users via the sophisticated salesforce.com provisioning subsystem. AppExchange applications can be purchased in an on-demand fashion from their authors and can be rapidly integrated within a preexisting Salesforce.com instance.
I’ve been browsing the CRM space lately and was surprised at the number of ‘software as service’ (SAS) startups.
The SAS-CRM vendors are beginning to move into the verticals. There is CiviCRM for non-profits and politicos. Sugar-CRM aims to lower the cost of CRM by delivering a widely deployed, open source solution for the mid-market. Microsoft has produced a viable solution with Microsoft Dynamics 3.0. Of course there is the big gorilla, Salesforce.com, which has the most mature SAS CRM platform.
Vendors like LinkedIn, Ryze, Friendster and firms like Plaxo have functionality that rests on the periphery of CRM. These folks manage and mine the interconnected web of connections contained within the CRM adding value to data collected via sales and marketing activities. MovingOn is experimenting with CRM integration by providing Salesforce.com functionality within the blogging network.
All of the firms mentioned share one thing in common; each provides a web service framework so that it can be easily integrated with other services and functions. Web services are, of course, a trademark of Web 2.0.
