Software-as-service CRM vendor salesforce.com today launched sforce, the salesforce.com client/service application development utility designed to enable enterprises to rapidly build and deliver business applications using the software-as-service model.

"Sforce will change how applications are built as significantly as salesforce.com changed how applications are delivered," said salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff. "No competing system provides all the online application services, UI framework and instant deployment that the sforce platform does."

Using the same utility computing model as salesforce.com, sforce provides tools for developers to build business applications directly over the Internet, using the tools they already know. Strategic alliances and relationships with leading tool vendors allow developers to use products such as Sun ONE Studio, Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET, Borland JBuilder and BEA WebLogic Workshop to build enterprise solutions, with sforce providing core application services such as authentication, data management, document management and text search.

The sforce online application development utility allows companies to deploy Web services utilizing the write-once, run-anywhere capabilities of the Java platform. Using industry-standard Web service protocols like XML, WSDL and SOAP, sforce developers can build applications for PCs, PDAs, smart phones and other Internet-aware devices without buying additional software or servers. Sforce developers can also extend salesforce.com's functionality and integrate salesforce.com with other applications.

For example, a developer could use the SOAP-based APIs available in the first release to integrate salesforce.com with applications in Microsoft Office 2003. An enterprise that used Microsoft Word to generate new business proposals could integrate those documents with salesforce.com in such a way that when the documents were saved, the customer-specific information in them would be automatically updated in salesforce.com, and when information in salesforce.com changed, it would be updated in the Word document.

Initially, sforce will be most appropriate for developers performing these types of extensions to existing CRM-centric applications, since the APIs and application services being released in this first phase expose only low-level functions in the customer-facing services that are part of salesforce.com. Future releases beginning later this year will enable developers to extend other existing applications or build entire non-CRM applications from scratch.

For example, a developer could build a computer telephony integration (CTI) application that tapped into detailed customer information in salesforce.com to power predictive outbound calling. Using other sforce components, developers could also build new composite applications for functions such as project management, document management and asset management.

Sforce deployment costs $50/end user/month, plus $1/MB/month with the first three users and 10 MB free for the first year. Support, sample code and the salesforce.com Developer Edition are available online for free. Deployment is free for salesforce.com Enterprise Edition customers.