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"We believe that the Internet has democratised enterprise software and that companies no longer have to tolerate risky, expensive, difficult-to-use software that takes months and years to install and offers little or no return on investment," said John Appleby, managing director of Salesforce Europe.
Appleby said, "At any time, and especially in the current environment, companies want a fast return on investment and no risk."
The new service has converted CRM software, traditionally implemented and managed in-house, into an on-line product managed by Salesforce.com.
The company said the new service includes sales force automation, customer support management and marketing automation components for a monthly subscription fee of EUR55 (IEP43.32) per user, per month. Training, customer support, upgrades, and updates are included in the monthly fee.
Appleby said, system now provides a complete CRM (customer relationship management) service providing a customer perspective that is visible across the whole organisation.
The system allows tracking, reporting, analysis and forecasting for sales, marketing and support organisations at a fraction of the cost of traditional client/server CRM systems. All departments share visibility into every aspect of customers and prospects and can access it wirelessly through WAP phones, PDAs or pagers.
Salesforce believes that the traditional software model is unsustainable.
The company said it believes that in future, most software will be delivered as a service via the Internet with no major up front implementation, licensing, maintenance or consultancy costs.
Appleby said the announcement was not a software release but released companies from the need to buy software.
The company, which was founded by former senior Oracle executive Marc Benioff has raised over USD62 million to date.
Private investors include Oracle President, Larry Ellison and Ted Waite chief executive of Gateway.
Salesforce said more than 26,000 organisations worldwide have registered to use the company's on-line sales force automation service which is integrated in the new offering.
European clients include Soft-ex, Digital Channel Partners, Performix Technologies, MadgeWeb, Magic Button and Berlitz.
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