Today Saleforce.com is announcing some notable upgrades to their AppExchange platform. Called ApexConnect these integration-focused enhancements are another step in making previously isolated software as a service (SaaS) solutions into more truly distributed platforms, the kind that can be directly integrated with enterprise IT systems as well as the APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb.
There are three parts to this announcement: ApexConnect, a set of integration/connector services to allow customers’ integrations to legacy applications; ConnectOut, an outbound messaging to allow external applications to be immediately notified of business events in Salesforce; and ConnectOracle for synchronization with Oracle 11i applications (for more on the product details see Dan Farber at ZDNet).
Last week I spoke with Ariel Kelman, Saleforce.com’s Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing and he emphasized just how important APIs are to Salesforce.com’s bottom line: in Q3 of this year, their API transactions surpassed CRM page views on their service for the first time. This means that more the 50% of their 3.7 billion transactions (page views and API calls) were via the API. Which is nearly 2 billion API calls in 3 months. That represents a lot of integration with third-party tools and enterprise applications.
One mashup-style Salesforce.com application is this one that’s based on their acquisition of Kieden. It allows Salesforce.com customers to manage the entire Google AdWords process from creating ads, placing bids, through to tracking ROI.
If you want to start learning about how to develop Salesforce.com applications, a great place to start is the new series by Tony Stubblebine over on the O’Reilly Network. The first installment of is now up: “An Introduction to Salesforce.com’s AppExchangeâ€?.
As more and more enterprises start adopting mashup-style practices and SOA begins to look like just another form of mashup development (or vice-versa), ProgrammableWeb will cover more of these developments. Look for the /enterprise section of this site coming early next year.
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4 Responses to “Salesforce.com Launches ApexConnect”
at 11:26 am
[...] Salesforce.com Launches ApexConnect Pour la première fois les transactions par API de SalesForce dépassent celles réalisées par l’interface web. SalesForce a décidé de pousser les développements/interactions avec des architectures/logiciels tiers. (tags: API ROI SalesForce) [...]
at 1:58 pm
[...] This is pretty incredible news in this ProgrammableWeb post, though not entirely unexpected. It’s not surprising, but the mash-ups and the host of acronyms around this space, such as SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and SaaS (Software as a Service), are coming to life in a big way. [...]
at 2:08 am
[...] Following close on the heels of last month’s platform news, this week Salesforce.com is making developer news again, this time with their announcement of AppStore, their vision for monetizing the AppExchange marketplace. What is it? For Salesforce.com customers it aims to be one-stop shopping for trying, buying and deploying on-demand applications. For developers it is a variety of commercial services and revenue sharing programs aim to make it a global distribution network to market, sell, invoice and deliver their AppExchange applications. So the last Salesforce.com news was about technical infrastructure and this week’s is about business infrastructure. For more details see Dan Farber at ZDNet. [...]
at 12:28 pm
[...] particular, Salesforce SOA builds on their enhancements from last year like Connect Out, our coverage here, by allowing a greater bi-directional, event-driven communication into and out of the [...]