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New Salesforce.com Certification Program for Salesforce CRM Admins and Force.com Developers to Accelerate SaaS and PaaS Industry Success

SAN FRANCISCO — Salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced the official salesforce.com certification program for Salesforce CRM administrators and Force.com developers. The new program will give Salesforce CRM admins and Force.com developers a valuable set of industry credentials that will signal their skill set to their employers and to the marketplace. Similarly, salesforce.com certification gives employers a way to train and assess current team members, identify, evaluate and hire qualified new professionals, and ensure their Salesforce CRM and Force.com deployments are being run by qualified experts to maximize their success. The salesforce.com certification is the world’s first SaaS and PaaS credential, demonstrating salesforce.com’s continued commitment to customer, partner and developer success with Salesforce CRM applications and the Force.com platform.

“Just as the DBA created a new employment category, we expect the Salesforce admin and Force.com developer certifications to create new job categories in SaaS and PaaS,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Through the salesforce.com IdeaExchange, our customers, partners and developers have asked us to accelerate their success with our Salesforce CRM applications and Force.com platform with a formal certification program. This new initiative signals the momentum of the SaaS and PaaS marketplace – and is another step forward in our vision of the End of Software.”

Community Driven Demand for Certification Program

In addition to thousands of listings for Salesforce and Force.com experience on industry job boards such as Craigslist.org, Dice, Monster, and http://developer.force.com, hundreds of votes and by customers, partners and developers have made a certification program the number one idea on the salesforce.com IdeaExchange. This community demand demonstrates the appetite in the salesforce.com eco-system for a formal certification program for Salesforce CRM applications and the Force.com platform.

“As an employer, I look for credentials,” said George Kenessey, CEO, MyLoanBiz. “We can be confident that job candidates who have a salesforce.com certification have the technology and development skills we’re looking for.”

“As a recruiting firm focused in the SaaS space, we are constantly hearing from the Salesforce Admin community that there is a need for an official certification from salesforce.com,” said Kim Wallins, Principal, Hire On-Demand. “It will make them more marketable and position them a step above their peers. From a company standpoint, it gives them additional peace of mind to know they are hiring someone who has completed a certification program delivered directly by salesforce.com.”

Certification and SaaS and PaaS Market Momentum

Salesforce.com’s move to roll out formal certification programs comes at a time when more and more companies are adopting SaaS and PaaS strategies. Research firm Gartner predicts that SaaS will become 25% of the overall software market by 2011.

As overall SaaS spending grows, certifications are becoming more and more important. With more than 43,600 customers, over 1 million subscribers and more than 90,000 developers in the developer.force.com program, salesforce.com is launching an official certification program to offer participants specific skills and give employers confidence they can hire the best-qualified people for key positions.

“The value of technology certifications is only going up, as witnessed by the growth in the certification market (6-8% CAGR),” said Doug Harward, CEO, TrainingIndustry.com. “Salesforce.com already offers award-winning training programs. Now, salesforce.com’s certification program brings much needed coverage — from the industry leader — to the fastest growing parts of the IT market — Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service. Individuals contemplating careers in Cloud Computing now have a way to not only get trained, but also earn a valuable credential.”

Professional Learning Paths for Salesforce Administrators and Force.com Developers

For Salesforce CRM administrators and Force.com developers, certification helps to enhance skills, advance careers, and get the most out of Salesforce applications and the Force.com platform. In just a few days, hands-on, instructor-led courses prepare attendees to immediately implement newfound knowledge in current projects. Participants will also be prepared to take certification exams to earn the professional credential. There are three levels of certification offered for admins and developers: Admin/Developer, Advanced Admin/Developer and Master Admin/Developer.

Through the certification preparation courses, Salesforce CRM admins will learn how to quickly customize Salesforce including page layouts, fields, tabs, and business processes, create a secure Salesforce environment, maintain and import clean data, create high-value reports and dashboards, and much more. The advanced administrator certification includes topics such as managing data to keep it clean and up to date, increasing user adoption and enhancing end-user productivity, implementing complex business processes within Salesforce and much more.

Force.com developers will learn how to build and customize multiuser Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications with clicks rather than code, define the application’s data model, customize the user interface, create advanced workflows and validations, automate business processes and much more. The advanced Force.com developer certification will cover topics such as Visualforce, using the Apex on-demand programming language, and Development-as-a-Service.

Pricing and Availability

The initial Salesforce CRM administrator course, Administration Essentials, costs $3,000 for a 4 day course. The initial Force.com developer certification course, Developer Essentials, costs $4,000 for a 5 day course. Course fees include a voucher to take the certification exam. Exams can also be purchased separately through testing centers for $200.

The Salesforce CRM administrator certification courses and tests are available now in North America. Force.com developer certification courses are currently scheduled to be available in North America in August 2008. The salesforce.com certification program is currently scheduled to be available in EMEA beginning in August 2008.

For more information, or to sign up, please visit: http://www.salesforce.com/certification.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company’s portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet. The company’s Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace available at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.