India Seizing the On-Demand Opportunity:
Force.com Platform Success on the Subcontinent

For India’s technical community, Salesforce.com's on-demand platform represents the next great development and delivery channel for the global marketplace. The platform gives developers on the subcontinent the same application creation, customization, integration, management and distribution capabilities that have been embraced by organizations around the globe.

For India’s technical community, Salesforce.com's Force.com platform represents the next great development and delivery channel for the global marketplace. The platform gives developers on the subcontinent the same application creation, customization, integration, management and distribution capabilities that have been embraced by organizations around the globe.

India is as fertile a ground for on-demand application development as you will find anywhere in the world. At the same time, companies around the globe are searching for innovative business applications and Salesforce.com helps bring the two together.

The Salesforce.com opportunity in India spans the spectrum, including large system integrators, boutique firms, and individual developers. Some companies have formed dedicated teams specializing in Salesforce.com deployment, while others have built entire businesses around the Force.com platform, providing system integration for customers while turning their best work into applications that are marketed and sold worldwide on Salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace. Some entrepreneurial developers have even created on-demand applications in their spare time that now sell to a global audience.

“The ‘chemistry’ in India is as good as it gets, combining the legendary energy and entrepreneurship of developers with the power of the Force.com platform,” said Kaiser Mulla-Feroze, Salesforce.com’s vice president of international development & strategy. “India is as fertile a ground for on-demand application development as you will find anywhere in the world. At the same time, companies around the globe are searching for innovative business applications.”

The momentum for innovative on-demand applications is enormous. Salesforce.com is now the fastest growing business software company in its class, with more than 32,000 customers and nearly 650,000 subscribers using its on-demand application in 14 languages. The company’s developer community is 45,000 strong and over 600 applications are now available on the AppExchange marketplace. Salesforce.com’s mirrored servers process more than 90 million transactions each day and host some 100,000 customer applications and objects. The research firm IDC estimates that the on-demand sector is growing at 31 percent each year. McKinsey & Company pegs the growth in enterprise adoption at 61 percent. According to Gartner, on-demand now accounts for 25 percent of the $220 billion software industry.

World class IT services in India help set the pace

While Salesforce.com itself began with small and medium-sized installations, the company is now seeing increased momentum at the enterprise level, with Cisco and Dell each supporting some 15,000 subscribers. Salesforce.com has also attracted the attention of the major system integrators in India – including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, and Satyam – who view the technology as a way to meet more of their customer’s needs while attracting new business.

At Tata Consultancy Services, for example, Salesforce.com has become a major alliance partner, working closely with TCS Innovation Labs. This year, TCS will train more than 150 consultants in Salesforce.com solutions and is engaged in deployments at some of the company’s largest customers. “The popularity of on-demand is growing as IT organizations are asked to do more with less,” said TCS vice president Dr. Gautam Shroff. “Since there's no need to provision and deploy servers, install software or set up databases, you can focus on solving the business problem at hand. The apps you build can be customized and configured by your end-users, so they have maximum usability.”

‎Dr. Shroff sees Force.com as the leading example of what he calls “Development 2.0,” the developers’ equivalent of Web 2.0. Dev 2.0 hallmarks include do-it-yourself application development by business analysts and end users; drag-and-drop re-use at the component level rather than at the code level; easy, inexpensive application configuration; and the on-demand model providing a better solution than install, deploy and maintain.

A rich API and the Apex Code programming language make the Force.com platform a ground-breaking environment for developing and deploying on-demand applications. As a result, the platform represents a powerful opportunity for entrepreneurs, who can quickly build applications and then, through the AppExchange marketplace, reach a global customer base.

“Salesforce.com provides customization capability on top of its CRM application, but it goes much further,” he said. “A rich API and the Apex Code programming language make the Force.com platform a ground-breaking environment for developing and deploying on-demand applications. As a result, the platform represents a powerful opportunity for entrepreneurs, who can quickly build applications and then, through the AppExchange marketplace, reach a global customer base.”

Entrepreneurs seize the opportunity

At the other end of the spectrum, Salesforce.com offers opportunities for entrepreneurial developers working in their spare time. Such was the case for Hemanshu Shah of Enzigma Group, India, who spent his weekends developing an application, called FTP Attachments, that now sells on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace to customers around the world. The inspiration came as Enzigma was migrating from its home-grown CRM system to Salesforce.com and wanted a way to store attachments. “So we created an application that allowed us to store them on our own servers,” Shah said. Published on AppExchange last February, FTP Attachments is available for free as a basic application, with the professional version selling for $399/year.

The boutique firm Compro Technologies is another long-term Salesforce.com partner that began with a call centre implementation project with CTI integration. "We came across islands of functionality that could be useful to the larger Salesforce community and decided to build one of these on the AppExchange marketplace. That’s how we got started," said Practice Head Dushyant Jamwal. The offering, called Lead Look-Alike Finder, is available on AppExchange and provides a fast, easy way to locate duplicate leads on the basis of selected data fields, as well as allowing users to edit duplicate leads by opening up the lead information page. Buoyed by the response for the application, Compro has accelerated plans to bring out more products on AppExchange.

We’ve been able to attract and retain some of the best and brightest because developers know that Salesforce.com is at the cutting edge.

Building a business around Salesforce.com

Boston-based Theikos [1], one of Salesforce.com’s first global partners, has built much of its business around Salesforce.com technology – and now has over 100 people in Delhi developing solutions on the Force.com platform. Theikos first gained attention six years ago by leveraging an offshore delivery model to deliver Salesforce.com engagements. In addition to more traditional implementation and optimization projects, Theikos gained expertise in SaaS custom application development. “We’ve probably built as many AppExchange applications as anybody out there," said Scott Blodgett, the firm's chief technology officer. Theikos offers its own suite of applications, including SmartQuote, SmartLead, and SmartPortal—the latter an advanced web portal solution for managing Salesforce.com information. In addition, Theikos has helped traditional software companies such as Hart-Hanks Trillium convert their products to be delivered on-demand on the AppExchange marketplace. Theikos also built a solution for OneSource, which specializes in value-added business information, linking the OneSource Account Intelligence Module with Salesforce.com data.

"Traditionally, people have thought of India as the place where back-end development takes place, but our Delhi activities are broader than that," said Ashuvinder Ahuja, who heads Theikos' India operations. “We are doing the full life cycle, from capturing the business requirements—the business process reengineering aspects of the project—to articulating a solution to the client, to implementing the solution right on through training. All of this is done remotely from India. For our customers, a key advantage of this model is its cost competitiveness. Salesforce.com has done a lot to bring mainstream software technology to the small business space."

We are doing the full life cycle, from capturing the business requirements—the business process reengineering aspects of the project—to articulating a solution to the client, to implementing the solution right on through training. All of this is done remotely from India. For our customers, a key advantage of this model is its cost competitiveness. Salesforce.com has done a lot to bring mainstream software technology to the small business space.

Theikos's Salesforce.com focus has also helped the firm attract talented programmers. "The best developers can pick and choose what they want to work on,” said Ahuja. “We’ve been able to attract and retain some of the best and brightest because developers know that Salesforce.com is at the cutting edge.” CTO Blodgett said that the opportunity for Apex development goes well beyond customer relationship management, Salesforce.com’s core specialty. "We are now doing all kinds of on-demand applications – from political fund raising to managing assets of large financial institutions.” The recently introduced Force.com Platform Edition helps pave the way by providing a platform license that covers Force.com applications beyond CRM.

Getting started

Blodgett has some tips for system integrators and developers looking to enter the Salesforce.com world. "Look at the sample code, then build some simple applications yourself. And if you run into problems, keep reading the FAQs. You’ll find that there are answers to most of the questions you might have. And thinking particularly of smaller developers—which is how I started in this business—it’s amazing how much help there is on the developer.force.com site, including some absolutely terrific people who work at Salesforce.com."

All tools and information are available for free, including an online database, interface builder, and the procedural Apex Code along with the ability to easily connect with Web services.

Salesforce.com’s Mulla-Feroze notes that it takes just a small time investment to get started on the Force.com platform. “We provide everything you need to go from the spark of an idea to a fully fledged application that can potentially sell thousands of licenses,” he said. He cites one example from Asia: EditGrid, an online spreadsheet developed by “eight guys in Hong Kong” that now runs on more than 10,000 installations.

“All tools and information are available for free, including an online database, interface builder, and the procedural Apex Code along with the ability to easily connect with Web services,” Mulla-Feroze said. “The process is so straightforward that most developers can begin building a simple application in about an hour. If you have more experience, you’ll find you can quickly create sophisticated business applications using familiar technologies like Java, .Net, PHP, AJAX, Ruby, and Perl in combination with the native Apex API set.”

To jump in, go to developer.force.com and click the “Getting Started” button. From there, you can join DFC, get an introduction in text and video, and start building a future in Force.com. And for a running start, download a free copy of Salesforce.com’s newly revised book Creating On-Demand Applications: An Introduction to the Force.com Platform, a practical, step-by-step guide to building your own business solutions.

Get started by writing your own on-demand application. Download the FREE Creating On-Demand Applications e-book and get access to the Developer Edition account.