It’s no secret that, in the customer relationship management, or “CRM,” industry – as well as in the call and contact center industries – CRM software provider, Salesforce.com offers unparallel services to its clientele.
And, its cloud-based software-as-a-service, or “SaaS (News - Alert),” systems, Force.com, has been widely reviewed by industry experts as a highly reliable and widely implemented system in the telecom industry.
In fact, Salesforce.com (News - Alert) reported that over 135,000 custom Force.com enterprise cloud computing platform applications have been built worldwide, an indication of its widespread adoption and acceptance.
Ranging from SMBs to large enterprises, more and more companies are moving application development projects to the cloud as a way to benefit from lower costs, lower risk and less in-house maintenance and software.
As a way to allow the general public, and those companies trying to scale back on spending in this currently tight economy, Salesforce.com offers a Force.com Free Edition. According to company officials, the free edition delivers everything companies need to get started building their first application in the cloud with the ability to deploy up to 100 users.
“Force.com Free Edition allows me to help my clients to build prototypes rapidly at low cost,” Hugo Bouchard, CEO, of IntelliCloud, said. "It’s a lot more productive for me to let companies like Google (News - Alert) and Salesforce.com manage the servers and infrastructure so I can focus on things like developing relevant applications and providing better advice for my clients.”
In addition to the basic application, the additional features are not too shabby either. With many user friendly features, the functionalities of the Force.com free edition include:
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Comprehensive capabilities of the Force.com platform
· One custom application of a users choice
· One Web site with up to 250,000 page views per month
· Up to 10 custom objects, or custom database tables, per user
· A sandbox development environment to test the application or Web site before deployment
· Free online training and a library of sample applications
With over 15,000 companies using the Force.com Free Edition, users can build a cloud system without the stress of a financial burden.
Kelly McGuire is a TMCnet Web editor, covering CRM and workforce technologies, and anchor of its daily TMC Newsroom video broadcast. Kelly also writes about eco-friendly "green" technologies and smart grids, compiling TMCnet's weekly e-Newsletters on those topics, as well as the cable industry. To read more of Kelly's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Kelly McGuire