At its first developer conference May 21 centered on Apex, Salesforce.com’s yet-to-be-released on-demand programming language, the company announced a new platform capability that will help developers build on-demand applications.
The monetization issue has carried over to Apex. In a March interview with eWEEK, Bill Emerson, an officer with Salesforce partner ForceAmp, said he is looking for the business model to evolve around Apex.
“We like the innovation and technology … we’re part of the [Apex] beta. Now we need to see the other elements of the business to see if it’s viable: the per-user infrastructure cost, and what we can add on top of that to sell to customers. The key thing is going to be the cost of infrastructure,” said Emerson, in Denver, Colo.
“If we want to sell something at $65 per month per user, what do we have to pay Salesforce? If we have to pay $60 to Salesforce then it doesn’t work.”
Should Salesforce become successful in building a large developer and partner base around Apex, it will propel the company from an on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) company to the go-to platform company for on-demand development, a position that would put Salesforce miles ahead of encroaching competition from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
The Salesforce SOA capability of Apex is expected to be ready for developer preview in August.
Check out eWEEK.com’s for the latest news, reviews and analysis about productivity and business solutions.
