(12 November 2007 8:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Salesforce.com has announced that Salesforce Winter '08 is now live, delivering 'Force.com Platform-as-a-Service' features for developers and customers to build and deploy any application on demand.

It includes the developer preview of Visualforce, a technology that is supposed to enable developers and ISVs to design any application, for any user, anywhere, with the first user Interface-as-a-Service. Also, it offers optimized support for Apple's new Safari 3 browser, bringing Apple's user experience to salesforce.com customers.

"The last six weeks have heralded a sea change for internet platforms," said Salesforce.com CEO and chairman Marc Benioff. "The industry has rallied around the concept of platform-as-a-service with companies like Facebook and Google changing the way consumer applications are built and delivered on the internet. We are thrilled to be at the forefront of this trend for businesses by delivering Force.com Platform-as-a-Service and Visualforce to revolutionize how enterprise applications are developed and delivered."

"The release of Salesforce Winter '08 and the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service delivers the most advanced set of applications and platform functionality available in the on-demand industry," said Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. "The addition of Visualforce now means that virtually any application you can think of can be built using on-demand development and deployment technology."

The Salesforce Winter '08 release also expands Salesforce from four to six application product lines, adding Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas to its award-winning suite of CRM applications. Built using the same technology behind salesforce.com's IdeaExchange, Salesforce Ideas enables customers to identify innovative ideas from their communities. Salesforce Ideas brings the wisdom of crowds to businesses for the first time by allowing online communities to submit, discuss and promote ideas.

In addition, Salesforce Content empowers companies with a host of Web 2.0 technologies, like tagging, subscriptions and recommendations, to bring the power of on demand to the unstructured data within an enterprise. By adding these two new applications to Salesforce Sales, Service, Marketing and PRM applications, the release of Salesforce Winter '08 makes multi-category, multi-application success available to the salesforce.com subscribers.

Salesforce Winter '08 is available immediately to all salesforce.com subscribers. Visualforce is currently available in developer preview. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.