Salesforce unveiled SaaS database - Database.com

December 08, 2010 | Author: Sandeep Sharma
It seems that Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, was thinking for a long time about how to outdo his "friend" Larry Ellison and prove to him that Cloud Computing - is not a vaporware. And he invented a cloud database that will run as a SaaS service without any software and hardware. After all, Oracle is now virtually a monopolist in the database market (after the SUN/MySQL acquisition) and if it will work, it's the best way to hurt Larry. For greater effect, Benioff has bought an ideal domain Database.com. And today at Dreamforce conference Mark presented the new service. Database.com allows to create reliable, scalable databases using the visual interface and access them from any mobile / web / desktop application via API-interfaces (SOAP and REST). It allows to store any type of content (including documents, pictures, video), supports the SQL query language and provides many additional bells and whistles, like push-update data from the database to application, user management and user authentication.

Database as a Service - is not a super new idea. Last year Amazon RDS and SQL Azure appeared. But these were database services for specific cloud platforms. And Database.com is positioned as an independent (remote) cloud database, and this means that every time your app will call it, the data will be transferred over thousands Internet miles (and this is slowing down the response and hurting security). So, it's not clear yet, if this service will be demanded.

But Marc Benioff is absolutely sure that it's a big thing. This is indicated by the service pricing. Unlike Amazon RDS and SQL Azure, Database.com wants you to pay not for CPU time and number of transactions, but for the number of records in the database ($10 per 100 thousand records), and even for each user ($10/month per user). And still need to pay for transactions - $10 per 150 thousand transactions. There is also a free plan, but it is limited to 100 thousand records, 3 users and 50 thousand transactions per month.

See also: Top 10 Online CRM software

Author: Sandeep Sharma
Sandeep is a marketing expert with a wealth of knowledge in various domains: customer relationship management, social media management, advertising, search engine optimization, website building, Sandeep has established himself as a multifaceted professional. He honed his skills while working at Salesforce and Hubspot, where he gained invaluable insights into the industry. Now, as the proud owner of a small advertising consulting agency, Sandeep continues to provide innovative and effective strategies to businesses, helping them thrive in the competitive landscape of digital marketing. You can contact Sandeep via email sandeep@liventerprise.com