Salesforce Launches Cloud-Based Database

Having pioneered in the SaaS market long before it was fashionable, Salesforce now sets its sights on a new niche. Kenneth Corbin reports.

Salesforce.com, the leader in customer-relationship management services, has launched a cloud-based database service that figures to bring the firm into closer competition with Oracle.

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) heralds the new Database.com as the first enterprise-level database service that sits entirely in the cloud, tapping into its established infrastructure to save developers the pain of maintaining and scaling their own in-house technologies.

“We see cloud databases as a massive market opportunity that will power the shift to enterprise applications that are natively cloud, mobile and social,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement.

Salesforce made the announcement at its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

The database offers support for an array of popular languages, inviting developers to connect to the Salesforce cloud with applications written in Java, Ruby, PHP and others.

Additionally, the firm says the Database.com APIs will respond to calls from applications that run on various enterprise cloud platforms, including Salesforce’s own Force.com, as well as Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) EC2. Then, too, Database.com will interoperate with apps that run natively on popular mobile devices such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone and the growing menu of products powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Read the rest at Database Journal.