Salesforce.com Devises Means To Let Users Tailor Its Service
The Wall St. Journal
10/09/06
By VAUHINI VARA

Salesforce.com Inc. today plans to announce a new technology to let users customize its online service, advancing the company's effort to court larger companies as customers.

Salesforce.com, San Francisco, was an early pioneer of what became known as "software as a service," letting salespeople and marketers keep track of their customers using a Web site rather than programs installed on their own computers.

Since Marc Benioff, a former Oracle Corp. executive, founded the company in 1999, it has chipped away at a market that is dominated by giants like Oracle, SAP AG and Microsoft Corp., which sell business-application software. It posted revenue of $309.9 million in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, largely by attracting small- and medium-sized businesses.

One shortcoming is that Salesforce.com's customers couldn't do much to adapt the service to fit their own business processes -- the way users can customize traditional software from, say, Oracle or SAP. That has kept away some large companies, turned off by the prospect of having to adjust the way they run their business to fit the company's Web service.

Now, Salesforce.com has developed a programming language called Apex that will let its users write their own code that will run on Salesforce.com's servers -- essentially letting them change the service so that it can complete new tasks. That could appeal to larger customers -- one of Mr. Benioff's goals as he tries to keep up Salesforce.com's rapid growth and fend off new competition from vendors of traditional software.

"A lot of companies will just not use software as a service," because they demand modifications to fit their own processes, says Sheryl Kingstone, an analyst at the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm. Salesforce.com's Apex technology could help "take away the competitive edge" of conventional software, she said.

The initiative could also help Salesforce.com compete with NetSuite Inc., San Mateo, Calif., which sells a broader set of services for areas such as financial management and payroll.

Mr. Benioff plans to unveil the technology at Dreamforce, the company's annual conference for customers, which is being held this week in San Francisco.