Salesforce.com To Launch E-Commerce Services

Salesforce.com Inc., a provider of hosted CRM applications, next month will launch services that will give customers online access to the company's software code so they can develop their own hosted applications. The idea, Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff says, is to spare businesses from having to create and manage their own E-commerce platforms.

Benioff likens the plan to E-commerce services offered by Amazon.com Inc. "Amazon isn't just a retail store on the Net," Benioff says. "If you make cameras, you can sell cameras there and use their E-commerce back end."

Customers will be able to access the Salesforce.com engine through a number of new Web services-based software hooks that the company will publish in June. "From an API perspective, we will be completely exposed," Benioff says. Salesforce.com plans to launch the service at an event in New York.

The company, one of the few success stories in the troubled ASP industry, hosts sales CRM software for 6,500 customers in more than 100 countries. Its investors include Oracle chairman Larry Ellison.