Salesforce launches AppExchange for OEMs

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff unveiled plans to transform his company into the iTunes of the business application world and laid the groundwork for AppExchange OEM Edition, the company’s newest service.

Using his company’s first-ever Appforce conference, Benioff spoke to an audience of AppExchange partners, users, and developers, painting a picture of a future filled with browser-based “mashup” composite applications. The OEM version of the AppExchange service will allow on-demand service providers to use Salesforce.com as a platform for creating services and applications not tied to Salesforce applications or even CRM.

Third-party providers will be able to access Salesforce.com services rather than spending time and money building their own, and they will get a built-in audience of potential customers receptive to the on-demand model, Benioff said.

Third-party SaaS providers can use parts of the Salesforce.com platform, such as the OS, customization tools, Web Service APIs, workflow, and logic, said Kendall Collins, vice president of marketing at Salesforce.com.

Instead of a real estate management ASP building its own dashboard, the company could customize Salesforce.com’s dashboard for real estate, Collins said.

Mashups could replace on-premises software, with AppExchange as the platform, Benioff said. In place of iTunes’ $1 a song, customers would purchase a business application for $25 per user, per month.

SAP’s NetWeaver also delivers core services to partners and customers. But Peter Graf, executive vice president of solution marketing at SAP, called Benioff’s vision a pipe dream.

“It is not black or white,” Graf said. The way SAP sees it, some on-demand solutions will be “re-insourced” into a company, whereas others might go in the opposite direction.

However, Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research, called composite applications the future and said Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP should pay attention.

“It delivers an order-of-magnitude lower cost for developers,” Pombriant said.

AppExchange OEM Edition cost $25 per user, per month. OEM Edition users will be responsible for pricing and availability of their solutions.