Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Gmail service hosts e-mails on Google servers and provides a Web
interface to access them and tools for migrating from Lotus Notes and
Microsoft Exchange. Google Docs is a web-based software for building text
documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. It supports features such as
tables, bullet points, basic fonts, and text size; it allows multiple users to edit
and update the same document and view the history of document changes;
and it provides a spell checker. The service allows users to import and export
files in several formats, including Microsoft Office, PDF, text, and OpenOffice
extensions.
Google Calendar is a browser-based scheduler; it supports multiple calen-
dars for a user, the ability to share a calendar with other users, the display of
daily/weekly/monthly views, and the ability to search events and synchro-
nize with the Outlook Calendar. Google Calendar is accessible from mobile
devices. Event reminders can be received via SMS, desktop pop-ups, or
e-mails. It is also possible to share your calendar with other Google Calendar
users. Picasa is a tool to upload, share, and edit images; it provides 1 GB of
disk space per user free of charge. Users can add tags to images and attach
locations to photos using Google Maps. Google Groups allows users to host
discussion forums to create messages online or via e-mail.
16.3.2 Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is a leading cloud provider for customer relationship man-
agement (CRM) software. In the sense of Chapter 3, Salesforce.com is an SaaS
offering that has been complemented by a PaaS offering where independent
third parties can develop and offer add-on software. The Salesforce.com
portfolio consists of four major parts:
1. The central part is a CRM SaaS offering called Salesforce. It provides
a web-based solution for sales, marketing, customer service, partner
management, and others. The central component is available in sev-
eral bundles that reflect different capabilities and numbers of users;
it is usually paid for on a monthly or yearly basis. As a classic SaaS
offering, this multitenant application runs on the Salesforce.com
servers and does not have to be installed locally.
2. Force.com is the name of a PaaS offering that allows customers or
independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop their own web-
based business applications and run them on the salesforce.com
infrastructure. For more technical details on Force.com, see the fol-
lowing discussion.
3. The business applications developed on Force.com can be obtained
on the AppExchange marketplace: the choice includes free and paid
apps. Via Force.com, the applications are preintegrated with the
Salesforce.com CRM, and their functionality often complements the
latter or is fine-tuned for particular industries.
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