Salesforce.com Tackles the Next Frontier in Contact Center Technologies with Service Cloud 2 - Delivering Innovation without the
05 October 2009 - 10:55PM
PR Newswire (US)
Five-minute upgrades will set a new standard for enterprise cloud
computing, by delivering upgrades while users work SAN FRANCISCO,
Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the
enterprise cloud computing company, today announced five-minute
upgrades and a new partnership with Cisco, further extending its
leadership position in cloud computing and bringing Service Cloud 2
to companies of all sizes. Companies will be able to access the
Service Cloud 2 even during planned maintenance windows with the
new five-minute upgrade technology. Making industry leading service
and support technology available to companies of all sizes,
salesforce.com and Cisco unveiled a complete call center running
entirely in the cloud with a combined solution integrating
telephony with CRM. The five-minute upgrade technology and new
solution with Cisco are delivered with Service Cloud 2,
salesforce.com's next generation solution for customer service. The
Service Cloud 2 exponentially increases the quality of service,
while lowering the cost, by leveraging the expertise of the
community. (Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO) The New
Standard for Contact Centers - The Five-Minute Upgrade Upgrades and
planned maintenance windows have always been viewed as a necessary
evil in the world of software. Many times these upgrades actually
made the application less useful with broken customizations and
integrations. Ten years ago, salesforce.com built applications on
the multi-tenant, real-time Force.com platform and was able to
deliver completely seamless and invisible upgrades to customers
three times a year. Salesforce.com delivered the industry's best
technology, upgrades that improved its applications, and did it all
without creating headaches for companies. Today, salesforce.com is
unveiling another revolution for the cloud computing industry with
the new five-minute upgrade. The five-minute upgrade represents an
incredible technology achievement demonstrating the power of the
Force.com platform and infrastructure. Never before have companies
been able to take advantage of the latest technology innovations
and evolve their customer service at the rate they are able to with
the Service Cloud 2. Salesforce.com is the only company able to
provide its customers with the five-minute upgrade technology,
which will deliver: -- Access: Now, companies will have read-only
access to their Service Cloud 2 deployment during planned
maintenance windows, enabling companies to continue servicing their
customers all while going through a full upgrade. Maintenance
windows will allow customers to access their data in read-only mode
for the duration of the maintenance, except during a five-minute
cut-over time, setting the new standard that all cloud computing
applications will be measured against. -- Real-Time, Mirrored Data
Centers: Five-minute upgrades are only possible because
salesforce.com has real-time, fully mirrored data centers. When
salesforce.com upgrades the service in one data center, companies
will still be able to access their applications through one of
salesforce.com's other global, real-time, mirrored data centers.
Cisco and Salesforce.com - Delivering the Contact Center in the
Cloud Salesforce.com and Cisco today announced a combined solution
to deliver a complete contact center in the cloud. The Cisco and
salesforce.com Customer Interaction Cloud brings together
salesforce.com's Service Cloud 2 with Cisco Unified Communications.
The solution empowers small and medium sized companies to run their
customer service completely in the cloud. Salesforce.com and Cisco
share a vision about moving technology into the cloud and
leveraging social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and
Google to deliver services to their customers where they are
already collaborating. For more information on this announcement,
please refer to the joint press release issued earlier today.
Service Cloud 2 - New Product Innovation for Customer Service and
Support On September 9th, salesforce.com announced the next chapter
in the customer service revolution with Service Cloud 2. New
product innovations introduced for the customer service industry
included: -- Salesforce Knowledge: A year after salesforce.com
acquired Instranet, salesforce.com will offer the world's first
integrated multi-tenant knowledge base, the first ever multi-tenant
knowledge base fully integrated with CRM and designed for cloud
computing. The core Service Cloud 2 knowledge base will deliver the
same benefits available to any application built on the Force.com
platform including rapid deployment, immediate results, simple
customizations, automatic upgrades and more. -- Salesforce Answers:
For years, customer service centers have been limited to knowledge
articles produced by company employees, and have not benefited from
the explosion of consumer wisdom that exists across the Web.
Utilizing the Service Cloud 2, Salesforce Answers will deliver a
unique online experience that helps companies leverage the
expertise in the cloud to bring the right answer to their
customers. Salesforce Answers will enable companies to start the
conversation with a unique online customer community, crowd-source
knowledge and leverage Facebook. -- Salesforce for Twitter: Twitter
provides a free platform for users to answer the question "What are
you doing?" in 140 characters or less and broadcast the answer to a
broader community. These "tweets" can cover any topic area,
including specific companies, brands and products. In today's
Web-driven world where there is an expectation of real-time
interaction, Salesforce for Twitter and the Service Cloud 2 give
companies an easy way to join the real-time customer service
conversations happening on Twitter by enabling them to search
Twitter in real-time, monitor service issues on Twitter, join
Twitter conversations, establish a Twitter support channel and
deliver real-time knowledge. Comments on the News: -- "The
five-minute upgrade is a revolution for the industry and a
revelation for customers. The power of the Force.com platform has
eliminated yet another painful legacy from on-premise software by
making upgrades nearly invisible for customer service
organizations. No longer will the customer service market be held
back by traditional technology," said Marc Benioff, chairman and
CEO of salesforce.com. "The Service Cloud 2 represents the future
of customer service." -- "With the introduction of five-minute
upgrades, salesforce.com has once again taken the traditional
software model and turned it on its head. Allowing companies to
access their applications, even during an upgrade is a monumental
achievement that the rest of the industry will be spending the next
few years trying to catch up to," said Bruce Richardson, Chief
Research Officer, AMR Research. -- "Since we started using
salesforce.com's Service Cloud 2, we have been able to streamline
our incident management process and provide an improved
self-service experience for our customers, together improving their
overall satisfaction. We think the new innovations coming from
salesforce.com, including Salesforce Knowledge, will be the next
step forward in allowing us to focus on our customers' needs,
instead of our infrastructure," said Brent Flanders, Perceptive
Software vice president technical services. Pricing and
Availability -- The five-minute upgrade feature is currently
scheduled to be available in beta in the fourth quarter of fiscal
year 2010 and pilot starting in Q1 of fiscal year 2011. -- The
combined solution from salesforce.com and Cisco is currently
scheduled to be generally available in the first quarter of
calendar year 2010. -- Salesforce Knowledge is currently scheduled
to be available in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010 for
corporate sales customers. It is currently scheduled to become
generally available in fiscal year 2011. -- Salesforce Answers is
currently scheduled to be available in pilot in the fourth quarter
of fiscal year 2010 and to become generally available in the first
quarter of fiscal year 2011. -- Salesforce for Twitter is available
today at no additional charge on the Force.com AppExchange for
Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers.
Supporting Resources -- For more information, please visit
http://www.salesforce.com/servicecloud2 -- Follow salesforce.com on
Twitter @salesforcenews About salesforce.com Salesforce.com is the
enterprise cloud computing company. The company's portfolio of
Salesforce CRM applications, available at
http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways
that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers
across sales, marketing and service. The company's Force.com
platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) enables customers,
partners and developers to quickly build powerful business
applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud.
Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multi-tenant architecture,
Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer
success with cloud computing. As of July 31, 2009, salesforce.com
manages customer information for approximately 63,200 customers
including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan
Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased
services or features referenced in this or other press releases or
public statements are not currently available and may not be
delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com
applications should make their purchase decisions based upon
features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has
headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and
trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol
"CRM". For more information please visit
http://www.salesforce.com/, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. Copyright
(c) 2009 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and
the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com,
inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered
trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their
respective owners.
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO
http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: salesforce.com CONTACT:
Katy Dormer of salesforce.com, +1-415-901-8595, Web Site:
http://www.salesforce.com/ http://www.salesforce.com/servicecloud2
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