Developers Gear Apps to Salesforce

At Salesforce.com's Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco later this month, the company is expected to demonstrate its Multiforce platform.

At Salesforce.com Inc.s Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco later this month, the company is expected to demonstrate its Multiforce platform and showcase software-as-a-service providers that have geared their applications to Multiforces development environment.

One such SAAS developer, Intacct Corp., based in San Jose, Calif., will announce its ERP On Demand for Multiforce, a compilation of process-oriented enterprise resource planning applications geared toward Salesforce.com users. Separately, Xactly Corp., also based in San Jose, will launch itself as a new SAAS company, previewing its on-demand compensation software, Incent.

For companies such as Intacct and Xactly, enabling applications with Multiforce development tools allows them to reach a larger customer base. Multiforce users will be able to aggregate hosted application components from different vendors, accessing the same data sources, and integrate functionality on the Multiforce platform.

Intaccts Multiforce offering comprises four process-oriented applications for Salesforce.com users: order management, invoice management, procurement management and expense management.

"The Salesforce.com user is going to see this as an integrated part of their applications, to manage the complete end-to-end process, from procuring to expense management," said Intacct CEO Robert Jurkowski. "This is going to be demonstrated by Marc [Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. com]. Weve already done a lot of tight integration."

Xactlys compensation software, due in 30 to 45 days, will provide capabilities that allow sales professionals to look into their compensation plans. The Xactly application is integrated with Salesforce.com, which means that when a salesperson makes a sale and updates Salesforce.coms CRM (customer relationship management) system, it will automatically reconcile with Xactly.

Click here to read about Salesforce.coms recent report on sales and growth. While Xactly hasnt turned on its Multiforce capabilities yet, the companys CEO, Chris Cabrera, said that it plans to by November.

Salesforce.com, for its part, has taken additional steps toward building a SAAS aggregation infrastructure with its Sforce and Supportforce capabilities. Sforce exposes APIs to allow third parties to build applications that access Salesforce.com data and processes; Supportforce provides the underlying data model and user interface for third-party applications.

Salesforce.com wont be alone in this market for long. In addition to IBM, which is working on its own SAAS integration platform, Intacct is quietly developing its own platform, Jurkowski said.

Despite the larger competition looming, Xactly beta user Jeff Williams, vice president of sales at IronPort Systems Inc., is thrilled with the fact that Xactly integrates with Salesforce.com. "What were really replacing here is Excel spreadsheets that combine Salesforce and NetSuite [ERP]," said Williams in San Bruno, Calif. "This will pay for itself in a year."

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