The Official Salesforce Blog - December 2008

• Announcing Force.com Checkout: Buy AppExchange Apps in Clicks

  Clara Shih Dec 13, 2008

  (From The AppExchange Blog)

  Exciting news! Starting this week, customers and partners can buy and sell AppExchange apps online anytime, anywhere, from a browser.

  

  On Monday, we officially launched Force.com Checkout to a standing-room only audience at our Cloudforce Event in New York. With Checkout, it is easier than ever for customers to do business with salesforce.com and our partners. Customers now have a "one stop shop" where you can trial, pay for, start using, and manage subscriptions of Salesforce CRM and some of your favorite AppExchange partner apps.

  Here is what CRM Buyer had to say:

  “On Monday, Salesforce.com announced some of the remaining pieces of the grand puzzle when it introduced Checkout…a necessary component that, though its focus is financial rather than technical, enables the technology to fully function. It appears to me that with Checkout, Salesforce now has deployed a new closed-loop business process for cloud computing that starts with development, moves through distribution and sales, and culminates in the transaction and payment….This is cool stuff.” 

  All Checkout partner applications are natively built and run on Force.com, which means you can rest assured they have the same security, reliability, and performance of applications from salesforce.com. And it's not just CRM applications. The majority of Checkout apps and new AppExchange apps are extending the SaaS model beyond just your sales, marketing, and customer service functions to other important areas in your company: human resources, IT, finance, operations, you name it. Here is the full list:

  • Financials and accounting ERP from CODA
  • Non-profit constituent relationship management from Convio
  • Fleet management solutions from Datasul
  • Order management ERP solutions from Glovia, a subsidiary of Fujitsu
  • Staffing solutions from Jobscience
  • Mobile expense reporting from Model Metrics
  • Recruiting from Riptide
  • Real estate management from Riptide
  • Customer reference tracking from Riptide
  • Risk management from StakeWare
  • Financial relationship management from StraightThrough
  • Productivity tools from Appirio
  • Compensation management from Callidus
  • Salesforce CRM administrator tools from DrivEnable

  Existing customers, you can start using Checkout today from your dropdown menu inside the app. Everyone else, learn more here.

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• Calling all Salesforce Admins: Take the App Builder Challenge

  Mark Trang Dec 9, 2008

  With the holiday season in full swing, I'm sure every Salesforce Admin has a wish-list of ways to extend their CRM and build new applications for their company. Whatever’s on yours—maybe a survey app, a recruitment portal, or maybe a project management tool—why not build it yourself? The Force.com platform makes it quick and easy: you can do it with skills you already have, inside of 60 days—and win great rewards for your innovation, including an all-expenses paid trip to Dreamforce Europe 2009 in London! Our Admin-to-Appbuilder Challenge Kit shows you how, with:

  :: Quick-Start App Builder Tools: How-to books and tutorials, a step-by-step Webinar, and more—exactly what you need to build with Force.com using clicks, not code
  :: Challenge Entry Guide: Full details on sharing your new app with the community on the AppExchange, entering it in the Challenge, and winning terrific prizes

  Your company wins, too: Your apps deploy at no extra cost, because they’re built and run on Force.com—just like Salesforce CRM. So take your career skills, achievements, and hero-status to a whole new next level in the new year: Get your Admin-to-Appbuilder Challenge Kit today!

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