Salesforce Announces Salesforce App Cloud-A Unified Platform for Building Connected Apps, Fast

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today announced Salesforce App Cloud, the next evolution of the Salesforce1 Platform. App Cloud integrates the platform services Salesforce is known for—including Force, Heroku Enterprise and Lightning—with new shared identity, data and network services to empower CIOs to deliver connected apps for any business need. In addition, App Cloud's platform services include Trailhead, a new interactive learning environment for all Salesforce app creators, and the AppExchange, the largest enterprise app marketplace in the world. Delivering all of these services on Salesforce's trusted cloud infrastructure, App Cloud empowers CIOs with everything they need to build apps fast in any language they want, for any device, and manage them in a single enterprise cloud environment.

In this burgeoning app economy, CIOs face enormous demand from their businesses to deliver apps that connect with customers, employees and even products, across every device. The lines between apps for consumer engagement, connected devices, and enterprise management are blurring. Now an app can connect drivers, cars and passengers, all in a single connected experience. Yet, CIOs are contending with siloed development platforms that are not able to produce apps that span different technical architectures and address multiple use cases. And, companies have increasing requirements around compliance and governance for their entire portfolio of apps.

In addition, enterprises are demanding mobile apps. An annual survey by PwC states that 81 percent of CEOs see mobile technologies for customer engagement as the most strategically important initiative in 2015.¹  According to Gartner, "through 2017, market demand for mobile app development services will grow at least five times faster than internal IT organizations' capacity to deliver them."²

Salesforce App Cloud—the Unified Platform for Delivering Connected Apps Fast

Salesforce pioneered the enterprise Platform as a Service market when it launched the Force platform in 2008. And today, Salesforce is the leading enterprise PaaS. The new App Cloud extends that leadership. CIOs are now empowered to build, scale and deploy mobile, web and wearable apps in a unified environment with new platform services including:

• Heroku Enterprise—Private Spaces, Regions and Identity: Heroku Enterprise offers everything that developers love, with new capabilities that give CIOs the control they need. Now, Heroku Enterprise enables developers to create connected apps using network, data and identity services shared across the App Cloud.  With Private Spaces, businesses can run apps in a dedicated Heroku private space with direct access to Salesforce's trusted infrastructure and to customers' on-premise data from legacy systems. With Regions, companies can choose to run their apps in metro areas throughout the world--including Dublin, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Northern Virginia and Oregon--based on accessibility, compliance or other requirements.  In addition, with Identity, Heroku Enterprise is connected to Force with bi-directional data sync, single sign-on and robust role-based access controls.
• SalesforceLightning—The Future of Modern Apps: Salesforce Lightning is a new metadata-driven platform service that is highly customizable, enabling anyone to build modern, connected app experiences that empower people to work faster, smarter and the way they want. Now anyone can create engaging user experiences by simply dragging and dropping components—pre-built, reusable building blocks, such as maps, calendars, buttons, and number entry forms. And, with Salesforce Lightning Design System, every developer has a how-to guide and code for building beautiful apps.
• Trailhead—Interactive Learning for All Salesforce App Creators: App Cloud includes Trailhead, a new interactive learning environment. Incorporating gamification, Trailhead guides all Salesforce app creators—from developers and business admins to end-users, marketers and data analysts—through the basic building blocks of App Cloud's services. Trailhead allows them to test their knowledge while earning points and badges to celebrate their achievements. Content in Trailhead is organized in trails to give users everything they need to know about developing apps with the App Cloud, and is available free of charge. To date, more than 40,000 app creators have participated in Trailhead training, and have earned more than 150,000 badges during its beta release.

With services for rapid app development, modern user experiences, integration, mobile app dev, identity management, compliance, governance and more, App Cloud is the most comprehensive and agile platform available to CIOs to deliver their app portfolio. App Cloud also includes an ecosystem of 2.3 million developers, who have built 5.5 million apps, and the AppExchange, the world's largest enterprise app marketplace, which features more than 2,800 ISV apps and 40 Lightning Components. All of this runs on the industry's most trusted enterprise infrastructure that delivers approximately 3.7 billion transactions every business day.

Comments on the news:

• "CIOs need a way to develop apps for the connected world," said Tod Nielsen, executive vice president of App Cloud, Salesforce. "App Cloud brings together all of Salesforce's leading platform services, empowering IT leaders with an integrated, trusted platform to quickly build connected apps for every business need."
• "We've built more than 200 apps on Salesforce, and most of them were built by 'citizen developers,'" said Herry Stallings, AVP of Applications Development, USAA. "Salesforce gives us all the cloud services we need to achieve incredible speed and scale in our app development, allowing us to keep innovating and grow our business."
• "Now more than ever, CIOs must quickly build apps that deliver not just the right business outcome but also user experience," said Laurent Lachal, Senior Analyst, Software – IT Solutions, Ovum. "And they are increasingly turning to broad public platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings to do so and thus establish themselves as digital transformation enablers who deliver business value as well as customer and partner satisfaction."

Pricing and Availability

• Heroku Private Spaces, Regions, and Identity are scheduled to be available in early 2016. Pricing for the new services will be announced at the time of general availability.
• Lightning Experience will be available in all Salesforce languages, except Arabic and Hebrew.
• Lightning App Builder and Components for Lightning Experience on the desktop are expected to be in pilot in October 2015 and expected to be generally available in Q1 2016. Access to both is included in all CRM and Force admin licenses.
• Salesforce Lighting App Builder and Components for mobile apps are generally available with the current release of Salesforce and are included in all CRM and Force admin licenses
• Salesforce Lightning Design System is currently available for free and can be accessed at http://salesforce.com/designsystem
• Trailhead is expected to be generally available in October 2015
• All other App Cloud services are available today and offer per user and consumption-based pricing

Additional Information

• Learn more about the App Cloud at: www.appcloud.com
• Read the App Cloud blog at:  https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2015/09/salesforce-app-cloud.html
• Learn more about Heroku Enterprise at: https://www.heroku.com/enterprise
• Read the Heroku Enterprise blog at: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2015/09/heroku-enterprise.html
• Learn more about the Lightning at: https://developer.salesforce.com/lightning
• Learn more about Trailhead at: https://developer.salesforce.com/trailhead

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce on Facebook: facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow @Salesforce on Twitter

About Salesforce

Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

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 applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce 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.

¹ PwC, 2015 US CEO Survey, January 2015
² Gartner, "The Enterprise App Explosion: Scaling One to 100 Mobile Apps" Published: 7 May 2015

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SOURCE Salesforce

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