From PR Newswire

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, today announced “Tour de Force,” a worldwide road show designed to inspire and educate customers, partners and developers on the power and innovation of the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. Tour de Force begins with a day-long event in San Francisco on January 17th that will feature salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ning, Inc. With specific tracks and sessions designed for CIOs, IT managers, and developers, Tour de Force attendees will receive practical and actionable knowledge for developing and delivering business applications entirely on demand.

A live video webcast of Mr. Benioff’s presentation from the January 17th Tour de Force event will be available on salesforce.com’s website at http://www.salesforce.com/investor/, beginning at approximately 10:00 am PST.

“We built and deployed our developers’ Bug Enhancement Tracking application on Force.com in less than six weeks,” said John Woods, director, information technology of eRx Network. “Tour de Force will address specific questions about building additional applications to bring the value of on- demand to the rest of our enterprise.”

“Just as customers drove us to deliver software-as-a-service CRM, they are now asking how they can leverage the Internet as a platform for developing and deploying the rest of their business applications,” said Clarence So, Chief Marketing Officer, salesforce.com. “Tour de Force will provide practical examples and specific advice for customers, partners and developers who want to leverage Internet platforms and cloud computing with Force.com.”

Join hundreds of developers, administrators, IT managers, and entrepreneurs who are using the Force.com Platform to create the next generation of business applications and companies. Tour de Force events will be filled with keynotes from industry visionaries and breakout sessions designed to enhance attendees’ technical and business skills. Tour de Force will feature a Force.com Immersion Lab to provide hands-on experience and access to Force.com engineers and product managers.

Tracks and Sessions at Tour de Force will include:

— Force.com Fundamentals:
Salesforce administrators, IT professionals and business analysts will
learn what every IT executive needs to know about SaaS and beyond; how
to go from zero to Force.com in 60 minutes; and best practices for
Force.com application builders.

— Apex, Visualforce & Beyond:
Experienced developers and programmers will get a deep dive on Apex
Code; how to use Visualforce and Force.com to build UIs for any
application; and using the Force.com Web Services API to extend the
power of applications.

— Force.com Entrepreneurs & ISVs:
Startups and prospective partners can attend and learn: secrets to SaaS
startup success; financing an on-demand company: a workshop for
building a bulletproof SaaS business plan; and an overview of the
Force.com Platform partner program.

The Tour de Force road show will reach around the globe, including stops in Atlanta, Bangalore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Dublin, Hyderabad, London, Los Angeles/Orange County, Munich, New York City, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Melbourne, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington D.C and more.

Attending Tour de Force is free but space is limited. Registration is now open at http://developer.salesforce.com/.

Force.com Platform and the AppExchange

Force.com (http://www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

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.

As of October 31, 2007, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 38,100 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. 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.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com 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.

Copyright (c) 2008 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the “no software” logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.