Salesforce Makes 'MySpace' For Business

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As part of the spring 2007 release of its flagship Salesforce Automation
(SFA) customer relationship management application, Salesforce.com (Quote) is rolling out what it calls “an enterprise-quality MySpace” application.

AppSpace, which allows businesses to create customer-facing portals
on demand, will be available in limited release beginning in April.

The software, the latest in Salesforce.com’s rapid software-as-a-service roll-out strategy, allows companies to engage their customers by sharing documents with them or soliciting feedback through forums.

AppSpace customers will also be able to add and share other on-demand enterprise
applications with their customers.

Kendall Collins, senior vice president of marketing at Salesforce.com, said
the application makes it easier for departments of larger enterprises to
create branded portals without having to use complex and more expensive
on-premise software.

“In the past, the portal has been expensive, closed, proprietary, fueled by
software and difficult to alter,” he told internetnews.com.

In some ways, the application is reminiscent of an enterprise wiki: it
provides an online space for users to easily upload or edit content, and
customers can establish user profiles to define privileges and role-based
access.

Unlike a wiki, however, AppSpace can be used to upload applications that can
then be shared by any user.

AppSpace is priced at $995 per month for up to 200 users; Collins said that
volume pricing will be available for customers who expect to have more than
200 users.

However, Salesforce.com has not yet ironed out all the operational wrinkles
of the products, such as how customers will be charged by other vendors for
the applications which they drop into the AppSpace portal.

Some of those applications, like Google (Quote) Spreadsheets, are free.

Project management applications available on AppExchange, Salesforce.com’s application marketplace, have an enterprise cost; others are paid for on a per user basis, which could boost costs significantly if every customer using the portal were counted as a user for those purposes.

Collins said the application is only being released to select customers,
who will have to sign up online and then contact a live Salesforce
representative, so that those kind of issues can be worked out before it
goes into general release.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.