The week in Salesforce

In Salesforce.com land, the company has announced the release of Apex Content, described as “a dramatic expansion of [the Salesforce] platform and application strategy for managing and sharing all business information on demand.”

With typical aggrandizement, chairman/CEO Marc Benioff stated that Content would “liberate customers from complex content management software like EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint by extending the on-demand model and Web 2.0 innovation throughout the enterprise."

Recently, Salesforce was revealed to be the platform of choice for Massachusetts pol Mitt Romney’s specialty CRM software “com-Mitt” used in the Romney For President campaign, assisting the Republican in raising some $20 million from supporters. Salesforce plans to use certain customisation concepts in the program – reportedly written by eBay’s Meg Whitman – to create the application to be called “CampaignForce.”

Joshua Greenbaum of ZDNet blogs about Benioff and Romney’s rival John McCain, a comparison the informal political analyst feels “is in order.” Specifically, writes Greenbaum, “Why we’re talking about Benioff and McCain in the same breath is based on McCain’s recent performance at a Baghdad marketplace and Marc’s recent performance in the software marketplace [of] San Francisco.”

Have both gone from reps of straightforward mavericks to prevaricating fat cats? The voters will ultimately have the final say, but this writer opines that, while McCain may well see his power base fully dissipated by 2009, Benioff figures to get away with a lot more in the world on CRM.