Salesforce.com is a software as a service (SaaS) company that distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce hosts the applications offsite. It is best known for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products. Salesforce.com has its services translated into 16 different languages and currently has 72,500 customers and over 2,100,000 subscribers.

Customer Relationship Management

Salesforce.com’s CRM solution is broken down into several modules: Sales, Service & Support, Partner Relationship Management, Marketing, Content, Ideas, Analytics, and their collaboration platform, Chatter.

Force.com Platform

Salesforce.com’s Platform-as-a-Service product is known as the Force.com Platform. The platform allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application and are hosted on salesforce.com’s infrastructure.

These applications are built using Apex (a proprietary Java-like programming language for the Force.com Platform) and Visualforce (an XML-like syntax for building user interfaces in HTML, AJAX or Flex).

Chatter

Chatter is a real time collaboration platform that brings together people, data, and content in a secure, private, trusted social framework. Rather than making people search for the data and documents they need to do their job, information is proactively fed to them via a real time news stream. Chatter was designed to answer the question, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?”‘

AppExchange

Launched in 2005, AppExchange is a directory of applications built for Salesforce by third-party developers, which users can purchase and add to their Salesforce environment. As of September 2008, there are over 800 applications available from over 450 ISVs.

Customization

Salesforce users can customize their CRM application. In the system, there are tabs such as “Contacts”, “Reports”, and “Accounts”. Each tab contains associated information. For example, “Contacts” has standard fields like First Name, Last Name, and Email.

Customization can be done on each tab, by adding user-defined custom fields.

Customization can also be done at the “platform” level by adding customized applications to a Salesforce.com instance, that is adding sets of customized / novel tabs for specific vertical or function level (Finance, Human Resources, etc.) features.

Web services

In addition to the web interface, Salesforce offers a SOAP Web service API that enables integration with other systems.

Mobile support

In April 2009, Salesforce released a slimmed down version of their application for subscribers with Blackberry, iPhone, and Windows mobile devices. In January 2010, Salesforce started to promote the use of 2D Barcodes for exporting contact information to mobile handsets.

Languages

English, Dutch, Spanish, German, French, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, Thai, Danish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Application and online help & training documentation are available in these languages.

Also, end user languages are available in Hungarian, Czech, Turkish, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian & Estonian.

Other

Other technologies allowing more advanced customization of salesforce.com interfaces are Resin Application Server, and the in-house technologies Apex (a Java-like programming language and programming platform) and S-controls (Salesforce widgets – these are predominantly based on JavaScript).

SugarCRM Strengths

1. Flexibility
   • Studio and Module Builder
   • Extensions to 3^rd party applications
   • SugarExchange
2. Control
   • Freedom of deployment
   • Customer owns their own data
   • Access to a relational backup anytime
3. Price
   • Price competitive
   • Best value for your money
   • Fast ROI

Flexibility between SugarCRM and Salesforce.com

1. SugarCRM
   • Easy drag and drop UI for customization
   • 5,000+ integrations with other applications
   • Create your own integrations in PHP (open language)
   • No limitations to the number of custom modules and workflow
2. Salesforce.com
   • Drag and drop UI for customization
   • ~1,000 integrations with other applications
   • Create your own integrations in force.com (proprietary language)
   • Limitations to the number of custom modules and workflow

Comparison: Database Architecture

1. SugarCRM
   • Multi-instance with choice between MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle
   • Every customer has their own database at no extra cost
   • Customers can add unlimited database fields
   • On-premise customers have full access to and control over the database schema
2. Salesforce.com
   • Multi-tenant Oracle database
   • All customers share one monolithic database
   • Customers can only add limited number of database fields
   • Access to the database schema is PROHIBITED