Salesforce.com and CRM SaaS

Perhaps the best-known example of Software as a Service (SaaS) is the Customer Relationship Management software offered by Salesforce.com whose solution offers sales, service, support, marketing, content, analytical analysis, and even collaboration through a platform called Chatter.

Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by a group of Oracle executives and early adopters of many of the technologies that are becoming cloud computing staples.

Salesforce.com extended its SaaS offering to allow developers to create add-on applications, turning the SaaS service into a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering called the Force.com Platform.

Applications built on Force.com are in the form of the Java variant called Apex using an XML syntax for creating user interfaces in HTML, Ajax, and Flex.

Nearly a thousand applications now exist for this platform from hundreds of vendors.

Note: Sometimes people refer to this type of software as CaaS or CRaaS for Customer Relationship as a Service software.

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