SaaS..a brief inroduction

So as some of you may have read from my previous blog postings, this past week I was fortunate enough to attend the Dreamforce convention's Global Gathering conference in San Francisco, CA. However, up to this point I haven't really discussed much about the service. Since I plan on using some of the information and photos I collected during my experience at the event, I figured I should tell you more about the service itself.

Salesforce.com is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions vendor, which is delivered using the software as a service model. In the past software programming was once static, Saas allows for dynamic attributes where the vendor can click a button and deploy a new version to over 47,000 companies utilizing its services.

Salesforce.com's Platform-as-a-Service product is known as the Force.com Platform. The platform allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application and are hosted on salesforce.com's infrastructure. This setup provides a collaborative environment where partners are able to build on the platform allowing users to share applications. So not only is the CRM's design and structure built in a collaborative environment, completely customizable, but the platform itself is as well :)

I have quickly summarized a few of the many features that make this tool extremely powerful:

Deployment
There is no software involved with the salesforce vendor. All services are web-based so updates to the service are rolled out seamlessly without the user having to perform any system changes. The service also provides price points for non-profit vendors making it quite affordable for higher ed, and perhaps the library world.

Design & Structure
The interface is easily customizable. A user can easily change field labels, add or remove fields without having the skill set of a DBA. Many of the table relationships are pre-defined. However, the user can easily add additional lookup fields to establish their own connections. A more advanced user can even choose to change the code driving the web pages themselves with the complete flexibility of html/xml code.


Integration (with other web services)
In addition to the web-based interface and design, Salesforce has many partners and offers a Web Services API enabling easy integration with other systems. One partner is Google which allows for full integration of their products which include Google Calendar, Doc's, Talk, Adwords, Analytics etc. Some other systems that can be integrated include Facebook, Plone, even Mobile devices, PDA's, and much much more.


"It's the best of both worlds: a complete, fully customizable customer relationship management (CRM) solution that's built on the cloud computing model, so you can get up and running right away and get more bang for your buck than you ever could with traditional software." - salesforce.com

I could blog on and on about the genius of Marc Benioff and the other salesforce creators, but I would rather provide a brief video clip that talks more about the technical evolution of Saas and the platform as a service concept as well as demo's some of its uniquely powerful tools. I think the video definitely gets it right as my one word summary of the service so far is simply amazing.

To view the original video click here or watch a short webcast from the conference here.