Salesforce.com readies Communities portal launch for general availability

Salesforce.com has provided an updated timeline and other availability details about its new internal and external collaboration platform, Communities.

See also: Asana beefs up collaboration tool set with Organizations debut

The social enterprise purveyor first unveiled Communities last August shortly ahead of Dreamforce 2012.

At that time, the platform became available only in limited pilot mode for select customers. As promised, Salesforce is readying Communities for general availability now.

Starting at $500 per month, Communities is scheduled to roll out in full by the end of this summer.

To recall, Communities is essentially an offshoot of Salesforce's enterprise social network Chatter.

Boasted by the San Francisco-headquartered corporation to "end legacy portal software," Communities is designed to bridge the gap between social and business processes all in one place: customers, employees, partners — virtually any stakeholder you want.

The idea is basically to draw upon social and mobile communications afloat thanks to consumer tech brands such as Facebook and Yelp and apply them to the enterprise for other industries.

In a sense, the more channels available for communicating with customers the better — so here is one more.

While Salesforce touts that Communities could be applied for any work purpose or team, there is a definite focus on sales, marketing, and customer service use cases.

Screenshots via Salesforce.com