Force.com provides a set of development tools and IT services that enable users to customize their Salesforce customer relationship management applications or to build entirely new applications and run them “in the cloud” on Salesforce’s data center infrastructure. Salesforce opened up Force.com to other independent software developers and listed their programs on its AppExchange.
Using AppExchange, small businesses can go online and easily download over 950 software applications, some add-ons to Salesforce.com and others that are unrelated, even in non-customer facing functions such as human resources. Force.com Sites, based on the Force.com development environment, enables users to develop Web pages
and register domain names. Pricing is based on site traffic.
Salesforce’s cloud infrastructure includes two data centers in the United States and a third in Singapore, with others in Europe and Japan planned for the future. Salesforce has additionally partnered with Amazon to enable Force.com customers to tap into Amazon’s cloud computing services (Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage Service.) Amazon’s services would handle the “cloudburst computing” tasks of Force.com applications that require extra processing power or storage capacity.