Salesforce unveils database in the cloud

SAN FRANCISCO: Salesforce.com has unveiled a cloud database product, aimed at supporting enterprises and developers wanting to expand their use of social and mobile apps.

Unveiled at the Dreamforce user event in San Francisco, Database.com is the same technology that has been powering the firm's Force.com platform, but Salesforce has now decided to split it off and market it separately.

"We were too wrapped up in our own Force.com world," said chief executive Marc Benioff at an executive session at the show, adding that Salesforce needed to "slash the top off it and give it its own console".

Benioff was keen to point out that Salesforce is not going after current database giants like Oracle and IBM.

"We're not in the traditional database business, we're in the cloud database business," he said.

The technology is designed to work with any language, platform and device. Salesforce said that companies can develop apps in Java, C#, Ruby or PHP, run the applications on platforms including Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure or Salesforce's own Force.com, and support them on devices such as BlackBerry, iPhone and Android handhelds.

Salesforce gave the example of developers being able to write applications using Java, run them natively on Android devices and connect to Database.com, and web developers building apps on Amazon EC2 using PHP which connect to Database.com.

Salesforce was also keen to talk up the security model behind Database.com, often a thorny issue for cloud computing.

Steve Fisher, executive vice president of technology at the firm, said that it supports SSL, single sign-on, identity confirmation and anti-phishing tools, as well as role-based security for user identity and authentication.