Salesforce.com unveiled a complete rewrite of its CRM platform, today, at its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Salesforce 1, as the new platform is called, includes APIs layered throughout in order to better facilitate developer access to Salesforce-stored data and functionality.
The Saleforce 1 platform is an automatic upgrade for existing customers. Unlike previous iterations of the platform, developers can now access most aspects of the Salesforce platform from outside of the Salesforce cloud. Previously, much of the Salesforce customization and application development had to take place inside the Force.com platform within Saleforce.com.
Other aspects of Salesforce.com were previously accessible via API, but the Salesforce 1 platform, said Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, makes it much easier to integrate with Salesforce through new APIs.
Elsewhere at the show, Salesforce.com and HP announced the Salesforce Superpod, a section of the Salesforce.com cloud that will run on HP’s enterprise cloud software. The agreement will make high performance instances of Salesforce.com available to customers.
The underlying message of these announcements, said Benioff, was that marketing can now be extended into every aspect of your business. Using the Salesforce 1 platform, developers can pull information from Salesforce to help their ad campaigns.
To demonstrate this, Benioff intimated that his toothbrush, from Phillips, includes wifi and GPS. He said that information stored in the toothbrush can be transferred to his dentist so he can tell whether Benioff has been brushing properly.
