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Salesforce.Com Announces Microsoft Office System Sforce Developer Program

Posted on: Wednesday, 2 February 2005, 09:00 CST

Microsoft Developers Can Easily Integrate Salesforce.com Customer Information into Microsoft Office System Applications

Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), today announced the creation of the sforce Developer Program for Microsoft Office (NASDAQ:MSFT). Through this program, millions of developers building on Microsoft Office 2000 or newer versions will have access to free tools and resources to help them create solutions that integrate key sales, marketing and support information directly into the Microsoft Office System productivity applications, including Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Word. Together, these solutions allow Salesforce.com's approximately 214,000 subscribers and 13,300 customers worldwide to extend how they share and manage information, combining the success of on-demand with the productivity of Office.

These new Microsoft Office System integrations are made possible through sforce, salesforce.com's client/service integration platform. Today, a variety of systems and platforms, including enterprise applications, desktop solutions, mobile devices and IP phone systems integrate with Salesforce.com and Supportforce.com via the sforce Web service API, making key business information available to users from all of their favorite applications and tools. Since its launch in June 2003, the sforce Web service API has grown to represent 20% of Salesforce.com traffic. This translates to millions of requests each day coming from integrated desktop and enterprise applications, rather than from a Web browser alone. Combined with the over 5,000 sforce developers, this activity demonstrates the importance and popularity of sforce solutions for thousands of salesforce.com's customers. With salesforce.com's new program for Microsoft Office, millions of new developers can join the existing community to build on sforce's popularity and create new solutions, such as integrated quoting, proposal generation and analytics solutions, opening on-demand to new possibilities and benefits.

"Salesforce.com's work demonstrates the value of integrating Microsoft Office with enterprise applications," said Adam LeVasseur, group product manager of Microsoft Corp. "We're pleased to see ISVs like Salesforce.com committed to building solutions that integrate with the Microsoft Office System, offering customers software tools that can be used not only for personal productivity, but also as a familiar access point to key enterprise sales, marketing and support data."

The sforce Developer Program for the Microsoft Office System includes:

-- The sforce Toolkit for Office: This Office plug-in makes it easy for developers to access the sforce API directly from within those products, simplifying the creation of new integrations and Office-based solutions. This toolkit, currently in beta, is available for download at http://sforce.com.

-- Office Directory in On-Demand Marketplace: The On-Demand Marketplace, launched last year at Dreamforce 2004, is being extended to include a new category for Office solutions, allowing developers and ISVs to easily reach salesforce.com's customer base.

-- Sforce Developer Community: The sforce community now includes dedicated message boards for developers creating Office solutions, as well as popular open source projects demonstrating how integrations can be used, including the sforce Connector for Excel.

This program accelerates the creation of new salesforce.com and Office integrations, and adds to the existing in market add-ons for Office, including Salesforce.com's own Office Edition. Existing sforce partners joining Salesforce.com in launching the program include Widgety with VIPMail(TM) (for Microsoft Outlook integration), CanyonBridge with cbForce(TM) (for Microsoft Exchange integration), Pragmatech with ConnectionCenter(TM) (for Microsoft Word integration) and CRMfusion, Inc. with DemandTools (for Microsoft Excel integration).

"A key part of our customers' success is their ability to easily create CRM solutions that meet their unique needs," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "This new program builds on that capability and on our vision of providing the world's most customizable CRM by allowing our customers to share and manage customer information from not just their Web browsers, but also via integration with Microsoft's Office System. We are delighted to work with Microsoft to enable a new level of productivity and success for our 13,300 customers."

About Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM). Through its award-winning salesforce.com family of products including Salesforce.com (http://www.salesforce.com) and Supportforce.com (http://www.supportforce.com), the company provides a comprehensive suite of CRM applications to help enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies meet the complex challenge of sharing and managing information on-demand. Salesforce.com and Supportforce.com are built on the sforce client/service integration platform and include the Customforce.com tool for complete on-demand customization. Sforce (http://www.sforce.com) and Customforce.com (http://www.customforce.com) allow customers and independent software vendors to customize and integrate salesforce.com's products, as well as build their own on-demand enterprise applications. As of December 31, 2004, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 13,300 customers and approximately 214,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust Banks. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and sforce, Customforce.com and Supportforce.com are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Source: Business Wire

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