Hosted customer relationship management (CRM) firm Salesforce.com launched its Summer '05 software update, which includes what officials bill the world's first on-demand operating system.
Although officials at the San Francisco company call Multiforce 1.0 an operating system, the term is somewhat of a misnomer. While the new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering does include the single data and security models and user interface found in operating systems like Windows or Linux, the software won't be installed onto anyone's hard drive, and it doesn't have the drivers for hardware or any other devices attached to the computer.
However, it does allow for a single, consistent platform for companies to use, manage and deploy all Salesforce.com and third-party, on-demand applications created on the Customforce platform.
With the use of Sforce, which, along with Customforce, received an upgrade, users can even integrate traditional software applications like Microsoft Office and Outlook.
It's all a part of Salesforce.com's strategy for "the end of software," a tagline coined by Marc Benioff, the company's CEO. Earlier this year he announced the Summer '05 upgrades and said it was part of the company's goal to expand outside its core CRM business and into other business processes like project management, budgeting and human resources.
Phill Robinson, Salesforce.com senior vice president of marketing, said the launch of Multiforce is a milestone for the company, and one that will break the company out from the perception it is only a CRM player.
For about nine months now, he said, customers and third-party developers have created more than 7 million customizations using the Customforce tool.
In this case, Multiforce will gain popularity from allowing companies to develop and use that hard-to-find recruiting application none of the other major software vendors are developing.
Ten percent of the market is served by companies like SAP
"There are lots of business problems organizations cannot solve because they can't manage and share information on demand, they can't manage and share across the company," he said. "They're locked in spreadsheets or locked in small databases departmentally; they're not able to share them with a common information architecture."
Tuesday's upgrade includes a number of added functionality to Salesforce.com's existing offerings:
, Siebel
and Oracle
, he said, but the other 90 percent is for the discrete applications that can never be served by traditional application vendors.