Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) , has released research findings from independent analyst firm Nucleus Research comparing application development in the cloud with traditional on premise application development. The results of the research, an in-depth analysis of 17 companies that had developed in both environments, found significant and quantifiable savings in time to development and ongoing support costs with Force.com. Specifically, the research showed that developers found they could deliver applications 4.9 times faster on Force.com than on JAVA or .NET.

"Companies are accelerating their adoption of the cloud for application development," said Marc Benioff, CEO and chairman, salesforce.com. "The benefits of the Force.com platform for enterprise cloud computing are immediate: CIOs get a real-time global infrastructure that enables application development and delivery five times faster at half the cost."

"Our in-depth analysis shows that cloud computing is dramatically changing the cost and time equation for custom application development," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, research, Nucleus Research. "Given the rapid time to value, lower cost, and greater ongoing flexibility, Force.com is likely to grow in popularity as an option for custom application development."
"We used the Force.com platform and our expertise from publishing more than 120,000 book titles to develop a system that is transforming our business," said James Stanley, CIO of Author Solutions. "Our Force.com projects came in under budget and ahead of schedule."

Force.com: A Proven Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform for ISVs and CIOs

Force.com is the only proven enterprise platform for building and running business applications in the cloud. Unlike a stack of disparate client/server hardware and software products, Force.com unifies the development and deployment model from the database to the device, allowing developers to easily assemble applications with clicks, components and code, and then instantly deploy them on salesforce.com's trusted global infrastructure.

The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM applications, more than 750 ISV partner applications like those from CODA and Fujitsu, and more than 110,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 55,400 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel.

Research Methodology

Nucleus Research conducted an analysis of 17 Force.com projects and found significant savings in time to development and ongoing support costs. In selecting the companies analyzed, Nucleus only included companies that could accurately compare development times in both Force.com and JAVA or .NET environments. In its interviews with developers, Nucleus discussed the details of the projects as well as developers' estimates of the time, in terms of total developer hours and total time from selection to deployment, each project would take to develop in Force.com versus a JAVA or .NET environment. The analysis included:
-- Companies that had moved existing applications to Force.com
-- Companies that had evaluated both traditional (JAVA and .NET)
development environments and Force.com and selected Force.com
-- Systems integrators that had worked with customers who selected
Force.com
-- ISVs that had evaluated traditional development environments and
selected Force.com

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing