21st for the 21st

Appropriately for the 21st century, Salesforce.com today previewed what company PR is calling the 21st generation of its on-demand business applications: Salesforce Winter ’07.

Salesforce Winter ’07 is scheduled for availability on an unspecified date in the fourth quarter (imagine that) and – never let it be said that colorful CEO Marc Benioff and his company’s publicity department are unaware of the value of some good hyperbole – promises to “drive forward a new era of unlimited freedom, collaboration and success for customers.”

Slightly more concretely speaking, Salesforce promises customization features “across every level of the service from the user interface to the AppExchange development platform.”

Even more specifically, Salesforce Winter ’07 is ased on AJAX and new features include the new dynamic user interface; fully customizable desktop console and components; computer-telephony integration with Cisco; a new interactive calendar design and task management; and the "Salesforce Anywhere" feature including Lotus Notes Edition.

The Winter ’07 update and its heavy emphasis on customization through the AppExchange platform goes along with the general Salesforce strategy, which seeks to allow as many mashups and multi-tenant applications as possible.

An extensive preview is promised for the on-demand event Dreamforce ’06 to be held October 8-11 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. As Salesforce would like to remind us all, conference registration for the event is now open and can be done at the Salesforce.com website.

Salesforce.com is currently the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. Salesforce.com’s on-demand platform AppExchange allows the building of applications, customization and integration of the Salesforce suite. Salesforce.com today manages customer information for approximately 22,700 customers and now more than 500,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices, America Online, Cendant Rental Car Group, Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust.