WELCOME to the freshman class of salesforce.com incubators!

32 companies including  Appirio, Kailea, Eloqua, and Clicktools have at least one incubator representative sitting in our new San Mateo (formerly occupied by Siebel before their exorcism) facility acting as the interface with us.  Here each company will be hoping to build the next killer app for the Salesforce.com AppExchange Directory. With direct access to our developers, marketing resources, and sales to help promote their new products, these companies are freed up to innovate away for a bargain basement price! 

As Denis Pobriant so eloquently put it in an article from internetnews.com "this kind of incubator is only possible in a SaaS world. A regular startup might need hundreds of thousands of dollars in systems and tools; by comparison, Salesforce.com's $20,000 fee is a pittance.

In between genius innovations these 32 hatchlings can blow off steam in the office game room filled with lava lamps, beanbag chairs and big blue exercise balls. 

Best of luck to our freshman class.  Expect more VERY soon even beyond Silicon Valley in Tokyo, London, India, and possibly Singapore.

Read more from our resident expert Clara Shih in her latest post on the AppExchange Blog

If that wasn't exciting enough we also just announced Salesforce Platform Edition where an organization can finally run the entire enterprise on demand, extending all the  benefits of software-as-a-service model (SaaS) into every department.  Salesforce Platform Edition includes all the collaboration features of the Salesforce application, plus the features of the Apex platform.

Apex Platform Features
Included in Salesforce Platform Edition