Announced at the Tour de Force Global Kickoff, January 17
Introducing a powerful new set of Development-as-a-Service tools and APIs that enable enterprise developers to easily harness the promise of cloud computing. Providing full access to the database, logic and user interface capabilities of the Force.com platform, these technologies unite the productivity of development and IT collaboration tools with the power of Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. Development as a Service includes the new Force.com Metadata API, the Force.com Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the Force.com Sandbox, and Force.com Code Share to provide developers with a comprehensive set of services to build enterprise Software-as-a-Service applications.
Force.com Metadata API
Providing access to the database schema, Apex code and Visualforce user interfaces that comprise a Force.com application, the Metadata API can be used to integrate with development tools and processes in a similar way the Force.com API can be used to integration with existing applications and systems.
Force.com IDE
The Force.com IDE is the world's first IDE for Platform-as-a-Service. Built on Eclipse, the Force.com IDE provides a means to manage all standard development tasks, such as project views, HTML composition, rich code editing with error tracking, and more – providing developers with a powerful and familiar environment for creating Force.com applications.
Force.com Sandbox
The Force.com Sandbox provides a separate on- demand application environment for development, QA, and training, providing a means for testing new customizations and for building and testing integrations and custom applications.
Force.com Code Share
With the new Force.com Code Share, developers across engineering organizations – or around the world – can collaborate on the development, testing and deployment of their PaaS applications. Integrating with most standards-based source control management systems, Code Share lets developers store the definitions of their Force.com applications in source control, and deploy those applications in either their Force.com Sandbox or production environments.
Apex Now Available in Enterprise Edition
Also announced at the Tour de Force kickoff event is the expanded availability of Apex - the world's first on demand programming language. Previous available only in Salesforce Unlimited Edition, Apex's business logic and programming capabilities are now available to Enterprise Edition subscribers. This change brings all of the power to create sophisticated business processes, transactions and other logic to more users than ever - making it a create to learn about how you can take advantage of Apex in your CRM customizations and Force.com apps.
To best take advantage of Apex, all Unlimited and Enterprise Edition customers will receive a new Apex Sandbox that they can use for development and testing of Apex code. The Apex Sandbox will copy all configurations into a separate environment that can be manually loaded with up to 10MB of data.
Revolutionary Utility Pricing for Force.com Platform-as-a-Service
As part of the Force.com Cloud Computing Architecture, salesforce.com is announcing a new utility pricing model for the Force.com Platform to give customers the flexibility to deploy Platform-as-a-Service applications to users throughout their enterprise based on their usage needs and patterns. CIOs and IT managers now have the power to deploy Force.com for unlimited or per-login usage for regular or occasional users depending on the specific needs of their enterprise.
Force.com cloud (per login) pricing is now available. The list price is $5.00 per login with a maximum of 5 logins per user per month, and will be offered at a special promotional price of $0.99 per login now through the end of 2008. Customer must purchase 5 logins per named user which are good for one month. Force.com Cloud pricing is for occasional-use, widely-deployed apps and is available for platform use only and not for CRM applications.
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