Salesforce opens up Apex platform

The Apex programming language is already used for Saleforce's hosted CRM

Salesforce.com has further opened up its programming platform, allowing users to enhance and change the way its online customer relationship management application functions. 

The Apex programming language is already used for Saleforce's hosted CRM, but was not available to outside developers. The language is scheduled for release in mid-2007.

Apex will allow users to change the way buttons, searches and even entire services within Salesforce operate, the company's chief executive Marc Benioff said at the Dreamforce 06 convention in San Francisco.

"You could almost say what we had up to this point is configuration, but what customers are really asking for is to build anything on demand without boundaries," he said.

The Apex announcement further expands on Salesforce's AppExchange which the company unveiled one year ago. AppExchange enables third-party developers to build software that exchanges data with the Salesforce application.

With Apex, users will have access to programming tools that will allow them to change the way the Salesforce service behaves by adding, for example, customised search procedures or buttons that categorise information in a specific way.

Apex is being marketed by Salesforce as an online language and platform. All code written in Apex will be able to run on Salesforce's Winter 07 system as well as future versions.

All the Apex content will be hosted on Salesforce servers and will be available to users through AppExchange.

Salesforce hopes that this will drive collaboration and innovation with Apex, as well as give users an incentive to move away from in-house IT development and the large operating costs that come with it.

"Everything can run in our data centres, and everything can be shared," Benioff told delegates. "We will let you handle the innovation, and we will handle the infrastructure."

In order to support Apex, as well as encourage development, the company also announced what it calls 'AppExchange Incubators'.

The centres will allow for developers to rent office space in a building that will house Salesforce professionals and provide access to seminars and tutorial sessions designed to help start-ups.

The first AppExchange Incubator, scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2007, is located in the former headquarters of Salesforce's former rival Siebel Systems in Silicon Valley.

Siebel was acquired by Oracle last year. The company pioneered CRM applications, but later lost its momentum to Salesforce.