Salesforce.com 2010 Annual Report Download - page 11

Table of Contents
The AppExchange
We offer the AppExchange, an online directory that provides customers a way to browse, test-drive, share, and install applications developed on our
Force.com platform. Partners and developers can offer their applications on the AppExchange directory. This directory gives our users a way to find and
install applications to expand their use of the Force.com platform to areas that are complementary to or extend beyond CRM.
When installing an enterprise cloud computing application built by a third-party partner or developer, customers authorize the third-party provider
access to their data. Because they are built, managed and provisioned by third parties, we do not warrant the functionality, security and integrity of the data
transmission or processing.
Professional Services
We offer consulting, implementation and training services to our customers to facilitate the adoption of our enterprise cloud computing CRM
application and platform services. Consulting services consist of services such as business process mapping, project management services and guidance on
best practices in using our service. Implementation services include systems integration, technical architecture and development, configuration and data
conversion as well as developing and delivering customized education programs for our customers. Most of our consulting and implementation engagements
are billed on a time and materials basis. We offer a number of traditional classroom and online educational classes that address topics such as implementing,
using, administering and developing on our service. We also offer classes for our partners who implement our service on behalf of our customers. We bill the
traditional classroom and some of the online educational classes on a per person, per class basis. There is a selection of online educational classes available at
no charge to customers who subscribe to our service.
As the reach of our enterprise cloud computing application services has grown, partners and other third party consulting and professional service
providers play an integral part in providing these services to our customers.
Technology, Development and Operations
Technology and Development
We do not provide software that must be written to different hardware, operating system and database platforms, or that depends upon a customer's
unique systems environment. Rather, we have optimized our service to run on a specific database and operating system using the tools and platforms best
suited to serve our customers. Performance, functional depth and the usability of our service drive our technology decisions and product direction.
We built our service as a highly scalable, multi-tenant application. We use commercially available hardware and a combination of proprietary and
commercially available software to provide our service. The application server is custom-built and runs on a lightweight Java Servlet and Java Server Pages
engine. We have custom-built core services such as database connection pooling and user session management tuned to our specific architecture and
environment, allowing us to continue to scale our service. We have combined a stateless environment, in which a user is not bound to a single server but can
be routed in the most optimal way to any number of servers, with an advanced data caching layer. Our customers can access the service through any Web
browser.
Our service treats all customers as logically separate tenants in central applications and databases. As a result, we are able to spread the cost of
delivering our service across our user base. In addition, because we do not have to manage thousands of distinct applications with their own business logic and
database schemas, we believe that we can scale our business faster than traditional software vendors. Moreover, we can focus our resources on building new
functionality to deliver to our customer base as a whole rather than on maintaining an infrastructure to support each of their distinct applications.
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