Nucleus Research finds that IT departments and ISVs experience more rapid time to value, lower cost and greater on-going flexibility developing in the cloud with Force.com SAN FRANCISCO, May 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced the research findings from independent analyst firm Nucleus Research comparing application development in the cloud with traditional on premise application development. The results of the research, an in-depth analysis of 17 companies that had developed in both environments, found significant and quantifiable savings in time to development and ongoing support costs with Force.com. Specifically, the research showed that developers found they could deliver applications 4.9 times faster on Force.com than on JAVA or .NET. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO) "Companies are accelerating their adoption of the cloud for application development," said Marc Benioff, CEO and chairman, salesforce.com. "The benefits of the Force.com platform for enterprise cloud computing are immediate: CIOs get a real-time global infrastructure that enables application development and delivery five times faster at half the cost." "Our in-depth analysis shows that cloud computing is dramatically changing the cost and time equation for custom application development," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, research, Nucleus Research. "Given the rapid time to value, lower cost, and greater ongoing flexibility, Force.com is likely to grow in popularity as an option for custom application development." "We used the Force.com platform and our expertise from publishing more than 120,000 book titles to develop a system that is transforming our business," said James Stanley, CIO of Author Solutions. "Our Force.com projects came in under budget and ahead of schedule." Force.com: A Proven Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform for ISVs and CIOs Force.com is the only proven enterprise platform for building and running business applications in the cloud. Unlike a stack of disparate client/server hardware and software products, Force.com unifies the development and deployment model from the database to the device, allowing developers to easily assemble applications with clicks, components and code, and then instantly deploy them on salesforce.com's trusted global infrastructure. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM applications, more than 750 ISV partner applications like those from CODA and Fujitsu, and more than 110,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 55,400 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel. Research Methodology Nucleus Research conducted an analysis of 17 Force.com projects and found significant savings in time to development and ongoing support costs. In selecting the companies analyzed, Nucleus only included companies that could accurately compare development times in both Force.com and JAVA or .NET environments. In its interviews with developers, Nucleus discussed the details of the projects as well as developers' estimates of the time, in terms of total developer hours and total time from selection to deployment, each project would take to develop in Force.com versus a JAVA or .NET environment. The analysis included: -- Companies that had moved existing applications to Force.com -- Companies that had evaluated both traditional (JAVA and .NET) development environments and Force.com and selected Force.com -- Systems integrators that had worked with customers who selected Force.com -- ISVs that had evaluated traditional development environments and selected Force.com The report cited a number of reasons why Force.com was faster than traditional environments: -- Custom objects that can be quickly built and re-used across projects -- Administrator tools and user interface capabilities, which can be quickly configured rather than requiring developers to build and test interfaces and tools from scratch -- Workflow engine - the rules, forms, and processes of Force.com's workflow engine can be quickly configured to support custom workflows -- Pre-tested - Force.com provides a pre-built and tested production environment, including database, database connectivity, application server, security protocols, and other application infrastructure items, such as load balancing, so developers have to make fewer technology strategy decisions and spend less time on testing before moving to production. The report is freely available on the salesforce.com and Nucleus Research Web sites: -- Salesforce.com: http://www.salesforce.com/platform/tco/ -- Nucleus Research: http://nucleusresearch.com/ About salesforce.com Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The company's portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers across sales, marketing and service. The company's Force.com platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) enables customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multi-tenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing. As of January 31, 2009, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 55,400 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com/, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. Copyright (c) 2009 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: salesforce.com CONTACT: Gordon Evans of salesforce.com, +1-415-536-7608, Web Site: http://www.salesforce.com/ http://nucleusresearch.com/

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