Salesforce.com 2011 Annual Report Download - page 16

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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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