Products And Services Of Salesforce

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Major corporations including Amazon, Google, IBM, Sun, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, Novell and Oracle have invested in cloud computing and offer individuals and businesses a range of cloud-based solutions.

Social Networking

Perhaps the most famous use of cloud computing, which does not strike people as "cloud computing" at first glance is social networking Websites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and many, many others. The main idea of social networking is to find people you already know or people you would like to know and share your information with them.

While the primary purpose of social networking previously was connecting people, businesses can use social networking too. By creating a Facebook fan page, a business can connect with its customers and at the same time, those customers will be promoting the business.

E-Mail

Some of the biggest cloud computing services are Web-based e-mail. Using a cloud computing e-mail solution allows the mechanics of hosting an e-mail server and ease in maintaining it.

Document/Spreadsheet/Other Hosting Services

As like Google Docs, a number of services like Zoho Office exist on the Internet that allows us to keep and edit the documents online. By doing so, the documents will be accessible anywhere and one can share the documents and collaborate on them. Multiple people can work in the same document simultaneously. A new online project management tool, Onit, is for "anyone and everyone who manage projects: big, small, business, legal."

Yahoo’s Flickr and Google's Picasa offer hosting for photographs that can be shared with friends, family and with the world. People can comment on the photographs, much like they can on Facebook, but this specialized photo hosting services offer some perks for the photography enthusiast.

Perhaps nothing has revolutionized entertainment more than YouTube, a video sharing site. Other video sharing sites include Vimeo and MetaCafe. Users are permitted to upload their own video content and the services take care of putting it into a form that can be easily viewed by users without downloading much, if any, special software.

5.1 Cloud Computing services

Google Apps

Reliable, secure web-based office tools for any size business Powerful, intuitive applications like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs can help to reduce IT costs and help employees to collaborate more effectively, all for just $50 per user per year.  

PanTerra Networks

PanTerra Networks is the leading provider for cloud-based unified Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) communications solutions for small and medium sized enterprises. The Company’s WorldSmart solution is delivered from the cloud through a 100% browser-based client, eliminating any premise-deployed hardware or software. WorldSmart provides unified communication services for unlimited digital voice, video and fax, instant message, mobile text and email all with presence through a single user and administrative interface

Cisco WebEx Mail

Cisco WebEx Mail reduces the burden of email management so IT can focus on strategic projects instead of routine tasks. Yet administrators remain fully in control through a web-based console, allowing them to adapt to ever-changing organizational needs. Cisco WebEx Mail includes advanced migration tools that simplify the migration process. The solution interoperates with existing email infrastructure as well as archiving and security solutions. This minimizes disruptions during the transition to a hosted email solution.

Yahoo Zimbra

Zimbra is a next-generation collaboration server that provides organizations greater overall flexibility and simplicity with integrated email, contacts, calendaring, sharing and document management plus mobility and desktop synchronization to users on any computer. Zimbra Collaboration Suite’s advanced web application and server is built on open standards and technologies to deliver unparalleled per-user scalability and lower overall total cost-of–ownership (TCO).

IBM LotusLive iNotes

LotusLive iNotes e-mail is a business-class messaging solution for everyone. Remote employees, retail workers and anyone who doesn’t work behind a desk will appreciate the easy access to company e-mail. With web-based e-mail, all employees will have real-time e-mail access from a Web browser and Internet connection. In addition to a web-based interface, all e-mail accounts are enabled with POP, authenticated SMTP and IMAP capabilities for use with e-mail clients such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook.

ElasticEmail

Elastic email makes email to be sent easier for both the developer and business manager of a cloud application. Several cloud application platforms such as Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 do not provide an email delivery service and may even set limits on email sending. Elastic Email provides direct email sending through a simple REST API. This means, instead of having to setup and configure an SMTP email server or service, one can begin sending email immediately.

Microsoft Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange Online is a web version of the ubiquitous on-premise e-mail client. Features include the ability to log on to the account and wipe mobile phone of sensitive data if it’s lost or stolen. Drawback: The program works best on Internet Explorer.

5.2 Salesforece.com

Salesforce.com is a vendor of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, which it delivers to businesses over the internet using the software as a service model. It is used to keep track of and strengthen a company’s relationship with its existing and potential clients. Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff

5.2.1 Products and Services of Salesforce.com

Customer Relationship Management: Salesforce.com's CRM solution is broken down into several applications: Sales, Service & Support, Partner Relationship Management, Marketing, Content, Ideas and Analytics.

Force.com Platform: Salesforce.com's Platform-as-a-Service product is known as the Force.com Platform. The platform allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application and are hosted on salesforce.com's infrastructure. These applications are built using Apex (a proprietary Java-like programming language for the Force.com Platform) and Visualforce (an XML-like syntax for building user interfaces in HTML, AJAX or Flex).

AppExchange: AppExchange is a directory of applications built for Salesforce by third-party developers which users can purchase and add to their Salesforce environment.

Customization: Salesforce users can customize their CRM application. In the system, there are tabs such as "Contacts", "Reports" and "Accounts". Each tab contains associated information. For example, "Contacts" has fields like First Name, Last Name, Email, etc. Customization can be done on each tab, by adding user-defined custom fields. Customization can also be done at the "platform" level by adding customized applications to a Salesforce.com instance that is adding sets of customized / novel tabs for specific vertical- or function-level (Finance, Human Resources, etc) features.

Web Services: In addition to the web interface, Salesforce offers a Web Services API that enables integration with other systems. Force.com is a multitenant platform and as such multiple customers have their own environments (orgs) in a shared platform. Each environment contains data that the customers want to store. Sometimes, however, customers may want to share data between themselves. Salesforce to Salesforce can be used to create this data sharing relationship. Salesforce to Salesforce is a natively supported feature of the Force.com platform and easily enables two trading partners to share relevant data records in real time.

5.3 Cloud Software for Private Banking

Cloud computing can enable banks to reuse IT resources more efficiently, whether they are purchased up-front or rented without any long-term commitment. According to research firm Gartner, market for cloud services will increase from $36 billion today to $160 billion by 2015. Gartner also says 20% of companies will be using cloud computing for significant parts of their technology environment by 2012. However, cloud computing is much more than simply renting servers and storage on-demand to reduce infrastructure costs, as many believe.

The cloud offers a host of opportunities for banks to build a more flexible, nimble and customer-centric business model, results in profitable growth. The term "cloud computing" is relatively recent, elements of the concept, such as timesharing and virtual machines, have been around for several decades. What makes cloud computing real now is the pervasiveness of the Internet and Internet technologies, virtualization, hardware commoditization, standardization and open source software..

Clouds can take two forms: private and public. For most banks, the first major foray into cloud computing will be via private clouds. Indeed, in a survey of IT executives at tier-one banks, 83% of participants saw private clouds as their first priority. Private clouds are built within a company’s data center and are designed to provision and distribute virtual application, infrastructure and communications services for internal business users.

In comparison, public clouds extend the data center’s capabilities by enabling the provision of IT services from third-party providers over a network. The increasing importance of cloud computing derives from its fit with current business priorities. It provides the capabilities businesses need on a flexible basis, helping them cost-effectively respond to changing conditions.

At the infrastructure level, companies have already begun to source raw computing resources i.e. processing power, network bandwidth and storage, from outside an on-demand basis. In most cases, these resources are used to augment rather than replace existing in-house infrastructure, which itself is increasingly virtualized. Unlike traditional hosting services, which provide dedicated hardware to customers, infrastructure cloud providers draw from a pool of shared resources and dynamically expand and contract to accommodate fluctuating demand from different user organizations. As a result, they provide far greater elasticity, economies of scale and cost advantage compared to standalone datacenters.

At the platform level, cloud-based environments provide application developers similar functionalities as in traditional desktop settings. Specifically, these include tools and other support for development, testing, deployment, runtime libraries and hosting. The emergence of such platforms allows independent software vendors (ISVs) and IT staff to develop and deploy online applications quickly using the third-party infrastructure.

Indeed, one of the benefits of the cloud is lower costs. Accenture, for example, estimates its own IT organization could save up to 50% of its hosting costs annually by transferring most of its applications to infrastructure clouds. At the platform cloud level, Bank of America is using Force.com as a way to eliminate many local application servers that are hosting departmental applications.

The cloud also can substantially reduce the time it takes for banks to roll out new applications. For example, SunTrust Bank rolled out its Salesforce.com CRM application to 2,000 employees in just over two months instead of the six to 12 months a typical non-cloud CRM solution would take to implement.

But bank executives should not take cloud savings as a given. They should seek rigorous ROI case studies based on actual cloud usage, rather than estimates of anticipated savings. Hardware, after all, is a relatively small component of data center costs. Executives need to uncover the hidden management, transition and usage costs that reveal themselves only when organizations start to work with the technology. They need to evaluate the pricing models of different kinds of cloud services. And they need to work with the finance department to develop a consistent and acceptable approach to measuring the costs and return from clouds. Only then can they reliably estimate the savings.

In addition, a number of factors can play an important role in determining how much money a bank ultimately can save by using the cloud:

Adopting common standards that make data sharing and movement easier.

Using standard, "fit for purpose" service levels as much as possible, according to requirements of the specific application.

Applying security and data privacy restrictions appropriately and, again, standardizing the number of different levels as much as possible.

Overcoming any departmental ownership issues so as much work can be moved to the shared cloud as possible.

Taking care to maintain flexibility around procurement to avoid being locked into specific supplier arrangements.

While saving money can be attractive, we believe there is much more to cloud computing than cost reduction. We see two areas in which cloud computing can create significant opportunities for banks to create new business models that are more customer centric and nimble and, consequently, can help banks to grow more quickly and more profitably.

Building a Frictionless and Flexible Ecosystem: Cloud computing most compelling use case for banks likely will be in the way innovative services can be created. The cloud gives banks an opportunity to break apart their own value chain, be it credit approval or back-office fulfillment. A bank can re-configure its business in-real-time by dynamically sourcing from several service providers.

Cloud services extend into the back office as well: Paypal, while relying on both banks and credit cards in its system, wants to streamline the way money moves. Twitpay, Zong and Square are new entrants into the payments and transaction processing business and all are aiming to reduce fees and accelerate the movement of money. Nimble application developers are conjuring up the latest cloud services that seek to bypass any entity that slows down steps in both the front and back office.

One company that already is using the cloud to push the limits of traditional banking transactions is Britain-based Zopa. According to Zopa’s website, the company "is a marketplace where people lend and borrow money to and from each other, sidestepping the banks. It’s a smarter, fairer and altogether more human way of managing your money, where both borrowers and lenders get better rates."

While plenty of questions remain about Zopa’s business in terms of the maturity and viability of these new models to move money, Zopa is demonstrating the "art of the possible" in using cloud computing to orchestrate business processes outside the firewall.

Another benefit of the cloud is giving consumers 24x7x365 access to their banks. Process clouds and collaboration clouds can allow experts to connect to any branch location and become virtual advisors to answer questions about products and services. Such ability to respond to customer’s means a bank will never have to say no, maybe or later to a request. Automated and human-directed avatars could further extend the reach of the branch in terms of time, location and product expertise.

5.4 Cloud Software for Asset Management

Increased regulations imposed on the financial services space and its participants are expected to have a material impact on the technology and operational decisions they will need to make. These reforms will have a substantial influence on more than 4,000 brokerage firms and an estimated 8,500 investment managers globally. The new regulations are likely to push some firms to further migrate functions which are traditionally maintained within the walls of the asset management firms.

Chief financial officers will continue to apply pressure to heads of IT and operations to seek ways to trim costs in response to continued market uncertainty and reduced profitability. At Gartner’s Data Center Conference, 55 attendees responded to a poll asking, "By 2015, how would you describe your virtualization progress?" The responses at left show a majority of users in the financial services space lean toward greater use of private and hybrid clouds.

In addition to demands for asset management technology improvements, there will likely be opportunities for institutions that service asset managers and broker-dealers. These include custodian banks, sub-custodians, prime brokers and hedge-fund administrators. With unprecedented regulatory activity and more stringent client demands on asset managers, achieving growth will be difficult without the appropriate technology infrastructure in place. If asset managers are forced to divert scarce and valuable resources to overcoming operational issues and deficiencies in their investment management IT platforms, then their prospects for increased productivity weaken.

5.4.1 What Solutions Does the Cloud Provide?

For asset management firms, the recession of 2010, coupled with extreme market volatility, has lowered both assets under management and fees. Post-crisis asset managers find themselves confronted by three major challenges to: i) lower the total cost of ownership, ii) ensure a high level of security and iii) expand operational capabilities to be responsive to intensified compliance audits.

Total cost of ownership ("TCO") is the term used to calculate the costs to run a system over its lifetime and is the most effective metric to compare the costs of cloud computing and installed software. It not only incorporates the fees paid to vendors, but also equipment and staff costs. One of the primary reasons firms turn to the cloud is to lower the TCO of the IT ecosystem. Management and maintenance of internal systems also come at a steep cost. As technology ages and becomes more antiquated, it also becomes more expensive to service and maintain. Additionally, there are implications for end users who must use a technology that perhaps in many instances, creates inefficiencies. The upgrading of versions can also interrupt usage and become a labor intensive process, placing additional stress on internal resources both at the end user and the firm. Not to mention, traditional software typically requires dedicated head count to manage IT systems. Over time, internal IT staffing typically can become one of an organization’s largest costs.

Today, with shrinking margins and heightened regulatory requirements, buy-side firms are looking to migrate functions that are not core to their business strategy. This move in turn alleviates some of the pain they experience from overgrown internal systems and ultimately lowers the Total Cost of Ownership. Table 1 shows the contrast between traditional IT and Cloud computing.

Table 1: Contrasting the added value of SaaS with traditional IT

Traditional Hardware and Software

Cloud Computing

Pay upfront capital expense

Pay-as-you-go-operational expense

High upfront cost and annual maintenance costs

Lower up-front subscription costs

Cost for applications, maintenance, infrastructure and IT/application resources

Cost for annual subscription and minimal IT/application resources

Longer time required to install and configure applications

Faster implementation and time-to-productivity

Not much control over vendor after purchase

More control over relationship with vendor

One of the core precepts of cloud computing is to avoid over-provisioning and under-provisioning of the IT function. Along with the cloud’s cost, revenue and margin advantages, rapid deployment of cloud services offers a low entry cost and the potential to enter and exploit new markets. Additionally, the cloud’s speed and rate of cost reduction can be much faster than traditional IT. In cloud computing, a buyer can purchase a service subscription from a provider instead of buying, owning, managing and updating a traditional IT platform themselves. Other productivity benefits can include: i) Pay-as-you-go, ii) Scalability, iii) Ease of implementation, iv) Automatic, seamless upgrades, vi) Facilitates M&A activity, vii) Redeploy resources to revenue generating activities and viii) Evolutionary.

Whatever cloud-based solution an asset manager chooses, the provider should have strong capabilities in all of these critical areas:

Deep understanding of asset management industry

Knowledge of compliance and regulatory issues

History of providing cloud-based services

Cloud provider does not outsource responsibility of passing an audit to a third-party technology vendor

Responsible for the cloud technology

Robust business continuity planning model with adequate datacenters for back-up

Automatic upgrades by way of the cloud

Predictable payments without a large up-front cost

Capability for hybrid solutions to integrate the cloud with local installations if needed

Willingness to customize solutions for asset manager

Security and privacy protections that meet or exceed internal IT and data security policies

Quickly scalable up and down as resources are needed

Clear explanation about where data is stored and how it is handled

Comprehensive SLA that meets or exceeds organization’s needs and requirements

Proven financial stability

A track record of successes, including references

For financial firms, cloud computing can represent the cornerstone of a powerful business strategy that combines reduced costs and increased regulatory responsiveness, while maintaining a high level of security. Clouds let companies redeploy valuable resources to undertake more business development initiatives. The key to accessing this technology, however, is the assurance that the chosen cloud provider has the depth of knowledge and experience required for firms that operate decisively in today’s global financial markets.

While many asset managers will enter into cloud computing with a primary goal to save money, they will quickly see that the cloud is really an entry point to becoming more efficient by continuing the evolution of technology architectures, management tools and operational processes.

5.5 Cloud Software for Fund Management

When it comes to technology stocks, investors have their heads in the cloud. According to some of the technology portfolio managers whose mutual funds drew the highest scores from Bloomberg Rankings as of September 2010, the hot theme in technology is cloud computing, in which hosted services such as communications infrastructure, software and data storage that used to be accomplished locally, on servers, are delivered via the Internet.

Although stronger business fundamentals were working in their favor, the price-to-earnings multiples for such companies as Salesforce.com (CRM) and Akamai Technologies (AKAM) expanded much more dramatically than underlying earnings during their third quarters.

Data storage stocks had an impressive run in the September quarter, attributed mostly to rising takeover premiums as investors watched the bidding war between Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) for cloud specialist 3PAR. Some of the froth came off the storage stocks on Oct. 6, after Equinix (EQIX) lowered its third-quarter revenue forecast by 2.2 percent and cut its fiscal year outlook by 12 percent, to roughly $1.22 billion.

Large companies in developed countries, eager to cut costs because they're concerned about the softer economic outlook, are turning to cloud-based information technology, which is cheaper than owning and managing their own infrastructure.

There is an estimation that tablet sales, can increase to 74.3% for the previous quarter’s total of 30.1 million units, which would eat into sales of netbooks and laptop computers. That bodes poorly for laptop makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard and for such netbook manufacturers as Acer, Asustek and LG Electronics.

5.5.1. Hedge funds using cloud computing

"This is a technology solution that is completely scalable and able to grow and shrink with the fund".

"We are witnessing a great deal of interest in and subsequent movement to, cloud computing. I believe it is absolutely the only way to go for a start-up manager".

These are the comments given by Pat Mullevey and Sam Wheeler regarding using Cloud Computing in Funds Management.

Pat Mullevey heads Systems Integration and Technical Support at Gravitas, a leading provider of IT, risk and research for the alternative investment industry. Pat was formerly, senior systems engineer at GoldenTree Asset Management, where he implemented GoldenTree’s private cloud and information systems manager with the US Marine Corps.

Sam Wheeler is responsible for the analysis and reporting of Signet’s portfolios and underlying positions on behalf of investors. Previously, Sam was a quantitative analyst at Signet (2007-2011) involved in the development of proprietary tools for the quantitative analysis of underlying managers.

Below are the Q&A session by Pat Mullevey and Sam Wheeler regarding using Cloud Computing in Funds Management. The session is organized by HFMWeek.

HFMWEEK (HFM): How does a cloud computing service benefit a hedge fund? how do you define the cloud and can it save funds money?

PAT MULLEVEY (PM): Cloud computing is radically changing the way funds think about meeting these needs in a cost-effective, flexible and scalable manner.

In terms of cost, cloud computing delivers IT infrastructure and applications as a flexible, on-demand service as opposed to a fixed capital cost and has dramatically reduced time-to-market for new funds. Funds can now manage IT infrastructure as part of its operational expense as opposed to fixed capital expenditure. This alleviates the need to commit to huge sums of capital upfront towards costly infrastructure footprints that require constant upgrading and maintenance. Cloud also allows funds to leverage market-leading technologies and only be charged for what resources are needed and consumed.

SAM WHEELER (SW): Cloud services provide many benefits for hedge funds. First, it is more cost efficient to lease hardware than purchase it directly, in addition to not having to allocate floor space for servers, pay IT maintenance professionals or cover the raw electricity to power the equipment. Second, cloud services provide rapid access to and deployment of, core services and infrastructure. Third, the vast pools of computing power available through cloud services provide managers access to greater computing power than historically available, at a lower gate to entry.

HFM: Why is cloud computing becoming more popular with hedge funds?

PM: Economic uncertainty and a more competitive investment climate have played a large part in the emergence and acceptance of cloud computing. Funds are expected to keep pace with new technologies to secure, process and retain critical investor data, achieve greater operational efficiency and to ensure failsafe provisions like disaster recovery are in place for business continuity. Cloud computing significantly reduces operational downtime due to IT problems. The cloud acts as a time machine of sorts by taking regular "snapshots" of entire systems, thus enabling administrators to rollback to any given point in time. This technology significantly reduces the time required to resolve IT-related issues.

SW: Cost is a major reason, but there are others. Cloud provides access to a vast amount of computing power that can be harnessed to run your core business. Also offers new and more efficient ways to communicate with the investors, service providers and partners. Increasing popularity has also come as cloud service providers are recognizing the sales opportunity represented by the financial services industry and are starting to specifically target asset managers with conferences and symposiums.

HFM: How can investors benefit from a hedge fund’s cloud computing service?

PM: Investors expect hedge funds to have best-in-class infrastructure, security and data retention and this was often a challenge due to cost and complexity. The outsourcing model to cloud has leveled the playing field to some extent, especially with respect to smaller funds that previously were not able to afford this level of technology. The cloud provides funds with access to on-demand resources, sophisticated technology and security to execute trades and support daily operations. Through the cloud, hedge funds have the flexibility to rapidly implement the newest trade platform, enterprise CRM systems, or risk management platforms while keeping costs and overhead to a minimum. This allows them the freedom to trade, while providing necessary transparency to investors.

SW: Managers can look to reduce costs by utilizing cloud services costs that could be passed on to investors directly or reinvested in the firm, both of which ultimately benefit investors themselves. It means that the competition between managers using such approaches is higher, which could lead to their improvement and refinement again, beneficial to end investors. The cloud also opens up new ways firms can integrate and communicate with one another. Increasingly, we are seeing so called ‘investor portals’ which give investors a single point of entry for their trade statements, account information, mailing lists etc. The ease of access and depth of information investors have can only improve with the uptake of cloud services.

HFM: Are regulators interested in how a hedge fund uses a cloud computing service?

PM: As with other aspects of financial services, cloud services for hedge funds must be designed, not just with performance and security in mind, but also according to regulatory requirements and best practices. Cloud provides a third-option to meet compliance requirements for data retention and business continuity, painlessly. As such, registered investment firms often use the cloud as a cost-efficient solution for retention of large volumes of data for compliance.

SW: Yes. The various aspects of cloud services fall within existing regulations, however as they continue to evolve our idea of what constitutes, for example, ‘personal data’ is likely to change, spark debate and subsequently refine regulation. We are increasingly seeing debate about data ownership, control, access and rights in the press. Although existing regulation doesn’t do much to explicitly mention cloud computing, there are a number of regulations that work together both within Europe and internationally. What cloud computing doing is opens up regional boundaries, where data may be at any given moment and it is a potential cause for all involved.

HFM: What can you see the next 12 months holding for cloud computing in the hedge fund space?

PM: Hedge funds will continue to realize the economies of scale in cloud computing. The ’as a service’ offerings will gain significant traction in the hedge fund space in 2012. Managers will benefit from the cost savings and quick availability of cloud services such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service, such as storage, hardware, servers and networking components), PaaS (Platform as a Service, for example Salesforce.com), AaaS (Application as a Services, such as Microsoft SharePoint) and SaaS (Security as a Service, for example intrusion detection systems).

SW: The next 12 months will see a steady growth in the awareness and adoption of cloud services. Much of what we do daily is now linked to the cloud in some way and with the growing ubiquity of mobile devices, its importance and relevance has been solidified. There are still concerns that need to be worked on and alleviated before hedge funds are less hesitant over larger scale reliance on cloud services, but as providers continue to work with managers, these are sure to be resolved.

Summary

The concepts, techniques and technologies are introduced and briefed in previous chapters. The materials in these chapter (Chapter 1 to 5) deals with application which use the concepts and technologies so far you studied. It gives examples regarding cloud computing services and applications. A cloud desktop, where the desktop is virtually managed is explained in Chapter 1 and also it describes which applications can be moved to Cloud. Chapter 2 to 4 explains the concepts and services rendered by Microsoft, Google and Amazon in a cloud computing arena. Chapter 5 lists out some of the famous cloud applications in the field of banking, asset management, fund management and email.