With instant time to value and infrastructure independence, cloud computing is convincing even skeptical IT professionals, who used to worry about requiring the security, customisation, and integration capabilities required for a successful IT implementations. Cloud computing platforms, also known as platform as a service (PaaS), eliminate maintenance tasks carried out manually by IT and allow business users to perform basic customisation tasks, therefore freeing the IT team to focus on innovations and creating true business value. That's the reason why the future of software rests firmly "in the cloud", and why cloud computing and platform-as-a-service solutions are rapidly replacing outdated client-server software models.

About the Cloud Computing Platform

Cloud computing in general, and the Force.com platform as a service in particular, offer an array of advantages over the traditional on-premise model.

• Cloud computing's time to value is unprecedented. Lower risk inherent in the implementation of business applications like CRM marks Salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, Force.com, apart from traditional client-server models. Force.com removes the need for up-front capital investment, shortening the route to CRM success. Salesforce CRM is built on the Force.com platform, and implementations often take less than a month and rarely longer than 3 months. Compare this to the 12 months or longer expected with traditional client/server software implementation, and you can quickly see how time to value increases massively with cloud computing. According to a recent study by Triple Tree and the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), platform-as-a-service deployments are 50 to 90 percent quicker, with a total cost of ownership five to ten times less than experienced with traditional software.
• Platform as a service has lower initial expense —and in the long run too. You can clearly see why a multitenant, cloud computing solution has much lower up-front costs. Expenses are minimsed, with no hardware, no operating systems, no database servers, not a single application server requiring installation, no consultants and staff to manage all this effort, and no need to ever worry about upgrades again. it's not only the short term where savings are made. Gartner estimates that typically two thirds of IT time and budgets end up being spent on maintaining infrastructure and managing updates. With cloud computing platforms neither of these issues concern service users. Cloud computing platforms are also shown to have fewer hidden costs. A recent study analysed a fully-loaded, five-year total cost of ownership (TCO) 50-seat project. The study considered several cost factors that are often hidden, ranging from needs analyses to internal downtime. The outcome of this research proved the TCO of a premise-based solution to be 2.5 times higher than that of the equivalent cloud computing solution.
• Never worry about upgrades again. Customers who run applications "in the cloud" enjoy the benefit of instant deployment of new software versions, which means that all users use the most up-to-date application versions at all times. When upgrades occur all customisations and integrations are maintained, and change management agents can focus exclusively on taking advantage of the new features and innovations available with each release.
• Platform as a service results in better service delivery. Tremendous economies of scale inherent in cloud computing platforms like Force.com enable higher service levels than the most companies are able to achieve by themselves. Salesforce.com have a long term belief in service delivery, and we make sure we use the best technologies, policies, and operational procedures to ensure security at the facilities, application, and network level; to ensure maximum uptime and uninterrupted availability; and to provide a performance record we are genuinely proud of. We invite you to find out more for yourself if you wish: http://trust.salesforce.com.
• Cloud computing equals higher scalability. Change and growth are traits often shown by successful businesses, as they add employees, start processing more transactions, develop new products and services, and complete mergers and acquisitions. Many events can dramatically and suddenly alter business requirements. Traditional enterprise software generally does not scale due to the prohibitive expense and complexity of scaling each and every layer of the hardware and software stacks, which, in practice, often involves complicated system replacements and data migrations. Customer-specific systems developed with J2EE, .NET, or open source tools are have similar difficulties when scaling is required because of infrastructure issues and fluid or unforeseen business requirements. Thanks to the very nature of cloud computing, salesforce.com's Force.com platform as a service extends, scales, and adapts to meet the ever-changing needs of your business.
• Cloud computing platform offers simple and powerful customisation possibilities. Even minor modifications to applications can leave users of on-premise applications waiting weeks or months for changes to occur. The Force.com platform as a service was devised right from the outset with customisation in mind. Changes to the user interface and underlying data objects can easily be made, so much so that even business users need only minutes to customize their applications, all without programming skills. By removing the burden of fulfilling constant change requests for minor customization work, IT resources are free to concentrate on performing more advanced types of customisation, such as associating specific behaviour with certain objects so they can be triggered by a wide range of system events.
• Cloud computing is easier on administrators. With the Force.com platform as a service and Salesforce CRM software and a service, administrators have the option to tailor processes and set definitions of how data is viewed for different departments and teams, with the assurance that users can access only the data they are authorised to view.
• Cloud computing platforms nurture true value and innovation. With the elimination of many traditional application development problems, cloud computing allows developers to focus purely on developing solutions that drive real business value. Salesforce.com offers developers a suite of tools and resources—including a point-and-click customisation tool, toolkits designed for the most popular development environments, and Force.com's programming language—Apex Code—as well as the developer.force.com developer community. Rapid growth in recent years has seen the Force.com community develop and release hundreds of innovative platform-as-a-service solutions that are available via the Force.com AppExchange marketplace for pre-integrated, software-as-a-service applications.

The Original Platform as a Service: Force.com

The platform as a service from salesforce.com, Force.com, not only powers Salesforce CRM applications, it's the speediest way to build and deploy other enterprise-class applications. Tasks that previously required months can now be achieved in weeks, or even days, thanks to the power and flexibility of the cloud computing platform model. There is no need for numerous, separately designed hardware and software products - Force.com grants speed to innovation through a powerful yet easy-to-use cloud computing development model. Developers can easily assemble applications with clicks, components and code, and then instantly deploy them to salesforce.com's platform as a service.

"Today we spend 63 percent of our time and budget on servers and just to keep the lights on—that is pure cost, no business value. With Force.com, we can outsource the infrastructure and focus on creating innovation and real business value." — CIO of Fortune 1000 company

• Developers and IT love the Force.com Platform as a Service. The endless burden of infrastructure maintenance, upgrade, and scaling is removed by Force.com, leaving more time for IT resources to focus on core development work which has a true business value.
• ISVs love the Force.com Platform as a Service, too. Salesforce.com offers not only the platform as a service, but also a marketing and distribution channel (the Force.com AppExchange marketplace) that puts the products developed by ISVs on the Force.com cloud computing platform in front of a highly qualified set of businesses seeking cloud computing solutions.