Salesforce.com rolls out customer data sharing; eyes 1 million subscribers

Salesforce.com on Wednesday will roll out business networking tools so customers can securely share information such as sales leads, product information and other communications.

Think Facebook and LinkedIn meets corporate data sharing files. Salesforce.com (all resources) dubs the effort a "multi-tenant business network."

With the announcement, to be made at events in New York and San Francisco, Salesforce.com is trying to build a moat around its business and take advantage of its subscriber base, which will pass the 1 million mark by the end of the month. By connecting subscribers to make transactions and information sharing easier Salesforce.com is trying to turn its community into a competitive advantage.

"This makes the size of community a relevant factor when choosing an on-demand company," says George Hu, executive vice president of products and marketing at Salesforce.com. Dell and DoubleClick are among the early adopters of the service. Dell, which will provide a demo later Wednesday, is using Salesforce to Salesforce to share information with channel partners.

As for the cost, Salesforce is charging $100 a month for each connection. The party that invites another partner pays the fee. Each company, say Dell connecting to ADP, is one connection. "We're pricing for mass adoption," says Hu.

Today, the service is predictably focused on sharing sales lead and CRM-type information. But as Salesforce.com grabs more large customers its possible that the latest service could be used to exchange supply chain information and link other business processes.

Hu didn't pan the idea, but noted that such applications would be fueled by AppExchange developers and Force.com build outs. In either case, at $100 a month Salesforce.com's latest service would cut down on custom company-to-company IT projects. IDC reckons integration issues cost enterprises $3 billion in expenses in 2006.