What is Salesforce.com?

Salesforce:

                 What is Salesforce? This is the first question that pops up at someone’s mind when they hear it for the first time! When I heard it for the first time at  the beginning of the year 2011, I thought it was some weird stuff that one of my friends was learning and was not going to get anything out of it. A cynical approach? May be, this is the way I am programmed! Okay coming back to the Salesforce Story:  In the year 2011 I had some backlog and a degree was a distant dream or figuratively it was still couple of years away. So I quit my BPO Job after 2 years in 2013. I needed something huge to get into IT-Companies.

                   After doing some research the thing that I zeroed on was "Salesforce". Not knowing what it was I decided to get into it and know it inside out. After paying  a handsome 1000 USD I got to know the basic of Salesforce.  I didn't know what Cloud Computing was, so after 2 weeks I was able to understand that Salesforce.com wasn't just a website. It was an entire application in the form of a website. I fell in Love with it and mind you, it wasn’t a love at first sight!  As the days passed I got to know the beautiful functionalities of Salesforce. For Beginners the earlier you realize the better it is for you! "Salesforce.com is not just a website, It’s an application/Software in the form of a website." If you observe the complex plumage of Salesforce.com you will realize it has a some interesting feathers like -  force.com, site.com, data.com etc. we'll discuss those later.

There are two big terms "SaaS" & "PaaS":

• · SaaS - Software as a Service

•    PaaS - Platform as a Service

What is the difference between these two?

                These questions are often asked in interviews as well. The simplest answer to this is Salesforce.com is SaaS where as Force.com is a PaaS. So what are these? I'll throw an example and you'll catch it at once. Have you ever used a software or played a game?? Yeah I confess – A lame question! Obviously you have! So there you are. That is the half of SaaS. Okay now consider that you are given access to the software/game unless and until you are paying a fee. Unless it’s the owner's wish to give you the access. So SaaS is a Software access just as a Service.  Got it?? Cool!! Now moving on to PaaS. Have you used a Turbo C++/ Eclipse/ Netbeans IDE?  Those are Platforms on which we work to create applications/software/programs. So a service provided so as to develop applications on the cloud are known as Platform as a Service.

So that was a rough Idea about Salesforce.com. Any query or suggestion is most welcome!

Written By : - Er. Anup Prakash (anup.prakash@hotmail.com) (Certified Developer).

Edited By : - Er. Akbar Ali Khan (uckbarr@yahoo.co.in) (Mechanical Engineer)