Winter is here!

A big day was had over at Salesforce.com, with the on-demand leader officially releasing Salesforce Winter ‘07, the 21st generation of the salesforce.com suite.

Citing its “hundreds” of new CRM features and enhancements, Winter ‘07 is called by company officials “the largest release in salesforce.com’s history.” The Winter ‘07 release also officially marks the official introduction of Apex officially, though company press material has been referring to it as such for months now.

Promises the company: “The salesforce.com multi-tenant model enabled Winter ‘07 to be delivered to all customers in a seamless upgrade that keeps the integrity of all pre-existing customizations and integrations.” Good to know; integrity is very important.

There’s lots new to look at in Winter ‘07. Among items that Salesforce would like to draw your attention to are:

• The Salesforce console – Built using AJAX, the Salesforce Console enables creation of a completely custom desktop.

• Enhanced activity management – Similarly to the Salesforce console, the AJAX calendar enables users to access records through the use of hovers. The AJAX calendar also includes pop-up reminders, the most requested feature from customers. Also, users can now share calendars.

• Client lifecycle management – “Person accounts” are records meant to manage relationships with individual clients who are not part of a corporate entity.

• Enhanced territory management – Territory management in Salesforce now allows the creation, management, and reportage of more complex sales organizations and territory structures.

• Computer Telephony Integration – This one is pumped as “one of the most significant features of Winter ‘07” With the introduction of Call Center Edition and its sixteen CTI integration partners, telephone networks can be integrated into Salesforce Service & Support.

• Integrated softphone – Salesforce Call Center Edition includes a fully integrated softphone in the user interface, with screen pop-ups to help call center agents improve their productivity and service levels.

• Multilingualism – Salesforce Service & Support now allows the knowledge base feature to be managed across all 14 languages supported by salesforce.com.

• Custom channel processes and branding – Winter ‘07 promises greater flexibility in tailoring channel business processes and increasing collaboration.

• Channel collaboration – Salesforce PRM customers can share applications, components or objects with partners.

• Enhanced partner management and performance reporting.

• Salesforce for Google AdWords – called “one of the most popular applications on the AppExchange,” Winter ‘07 allows creation of Google ads directly within Salesforce and management of the campaign from keyword to close.

• Clicks to Leads – Salesforce Marketing enables customers to quickly correlate search marketing spend with inbound leads.

• Search marketing ROI tracking.

In addition, Winter ‘07 promises “a more flexible on-demand database,” with hierarchical relationships, smart defaulting, new formula fields and more powerful custom objects. The workflow engine has been “significantly enhanced.”

New to the Apex on-demand platform is Apex Code, which Salesforce is calling “the world’s first on-demand programming language.” Apex Code introduces the ability to write code that runs on salesforce.com servers.

According to company figures, the Apex Web services API handles more than fifty percent of salesforce.com’s 3.7 billion services transactions in the third quarter of fiscal year 2007.

The Apex on-demand platform is generally available today. The Apex programming language is available today for developer preview, and is currently scheduled to be available in beta to salesforce.com customers later in 2007.