Will Salesforce.com's Next Big Bet Pay Off? New AMI Research Bulletin Analyzes salesforce.com's AppExchange Strategy and Execution Capabilities

Business Wire, Oct 26, 2005

NEW YORK -- After disrupting the status quo in the CRM industry, salesforce.com has embarked on AppExchange, a crusade to create an on demand, eBay type of marketplace that would radically transform the software industry. AMI-Partners' latest Research Bulletin, AppExchange: Salesforce.com's Next Big Bet, takes an in-depth look at salesforce.com's AppExchange initiative, and assesses the vendor's strategy and ability to execute on this ambitious vision.

This report was released today by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc, a leading consulting firm that specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services market intelligence -- with a strong focus on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises. AMI-Partners conducts the industry's most comprehensive annual tracking surveys of SMBs in more than 20 countries, including North America (the U.S. and Canada); Europe (the U.K., France, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland and Russia); Asia-Pacific (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand); and Latin America (Mexico and Brazil).

Research Bulletin Highlights

With AppExchange, salesforce.com customers will be able to easily shop for, buy and integrate new applications with salesforce.com. As important, salesforce.com intends to use AppExchange to grow its customer base by offering existing and new customers additional functionality and applications beyond CRM. AppExchange, Salesforce.com's Next Big Bet, analyzes salesforce.com's AppExchange strategy, key elements of its Approach partner program, and the vendor's strategy and ability to execute on this ambitious vision. The report examines:

--How salesforce is building on previous integration, customization, ecosystem and platform initiatives and progress to launch AppExchange, its platform and marketplace for on demand applications.

--Key components of Appforce, and how developers, partners and customers can use it to modify and build AppExchange applications.

--How salesforce.com is structuring Appforce to attract developers.

--salesforce.com's initial cadre of AppExchange partners, and the types of applications that these developers will deliver via AppExchange.

--The strengths and weaknesses of AppExchange, competitive implications, and how salesforce.com can accelerate momentum for this initiative.

According to report author, Laurie McCabe, Vice President of SMB Insights & Solutions, "CEO Marc Benioff and his company have an appetite for visionary thinking--and the ability to get partners and customers excited about change. AppExchange will help salesforce.com to continue to attract and grow its developer community, and provide its installed base customers with complementary applets that mesh with their requirements. But, AppExchange still needs more planning and refinement before achieving the dramatic momentum that it will need to become a major application hub."

About AMI-Partners

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital and actionable market intelligence -- focusing on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower its clients for success with the highest quality data, business planning and "go-to-market" solutions. AMI was founded in 1996 under the name of Access Media International (USA), Inc. by Andy Bose, a former group vice president at IDC. Since its inception, the firm has built a world-class management team, each with ten to fifteen years' experience in IT, telecom, online communications and multimedia.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last nine years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys; and its proprietary database of several thousand SMBs in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.

For more information on AMI-Partners or our global SMB studies, please email ask_ami@ami-partners.com, visit www.ami-partners.com or call 212-944-5100.