SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 17 -- Salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, today announced Force.com Cloud Computing Architecture. Delivering the power and flexibility of cloud computing to the enterprise, Force.com Cloud Computing Architecture includes a new pay-per-login utility pricing model for the Force.com Platform, and Force.com Development-as-a-Service, a new set of tools and services that will enable enterprise developers to easily harness the promise of cloud computing for application development. With Force.com providing the global infrastructure and services for database, logic, workflow, integration, user interface, application development and application exchange, the Force.com Cloud Computing Architecture offers the most comprehensive set of capabilities to harness cloud computing for the enterprise.

"Cloud computing, or Platform-as-a-Service, has enormous potential for the enterprise," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "Cloud computing offers almost unlimited computing power and collaboration at a massive scale. With Force.com Platform-as-Service, we are providing the necessary building blocks to make cloud computing real for the enterprise."

As part of the Force.com Cloud Computing Architecture, salesforce.com is announcing a new utility pricing model for the Force.com Platform to give customers the flexibility to deploy Platform-as-a-Service applications to users throughout their enterprise based on their usage needs and patterns. CIOs and IT managers now have the power to deploy Force.com for unlimited or per-login usage for regular or occasional users depending on the specific needs of their enterprise.

Customers are Building and Deploying PaaS Apps in the Cloud

Salesforce.com customers have already created more than 50,000 custom applications with the Force.com Platform, such as accounts receivable, bug enhancement tracking, employee compliance and training, emergency room staffing, expense reporting, food ingredient management, recruiting, time management, and many others. The new Force.com Edition utility pricing model will enable customers to deploy these custom applications throughout their enterprises in ways that make sense base on employee usage patterns.

For example, users in the account payable department may use expense reporting applications on a daily basis and need unlimited access to them for processing and accounting. Sales or marketing personnel may only need to access an expense reporting application once per month or a few times per quarter. The IT department can now take advantage of Force.com to deploy the expense reporting application in an unlimited fashion in the account payable department, and have per-login usage for sales and marketing employees.

Revolutionary Utility Pricing for Force.com Platform-as-a-Service

Force.com cloud (per login) pricing is now available. The list price is $5 per login, and will be offered at a special promotional price of 99 cents per login now through the end of 2008. Customers must purchase five logins per named user which are good for one month. For more frequent users (require more than five logins per month), Force.com pricing begins at $50 per user per month for unlimited logins.

Force.com cloud pricing is for occasional-use, widely-deployed apps and is available for platform use only and not for CRM applications.

Force.com PaaS -- A Cloud Computing Architecture for the Enterprise

The Force.com Platform-as-a-Service provides a comprehensive cloud computing architecture to revolutionize application creation and delivery. Provided completely as a service via the Internet, the Force.com Platform provides the necessary building blocks to enable business application creation and delivery, without the need for software and hardware client-server infrastructure.

By replacing the cost and complexity of software platforms with a complete, scalable service, Force.com provides developers the fastest path to turn ideas into business impact. The Force.com PaaS encompasses a complete feature set for the creation of business applications, including the ability to create any database on demand, a workflow engine for managing collaboration between users, the Apex Code programming language for building complex logic, the Force.com Web services API for programmatic access, mash-ups, and integration with other applications and data, Visualforce for a framework to build any User-Interface-as-a-Service, and now Force.com Development-as-a-Service to provide a comprehensive set of tools and services for developers, partners and customers.

Force.com Platform and the AppExchange

Force.com (www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet. The company's Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace available at www.salesforce.com/appexchange.

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Source: Salesforce.com