AppExchange from salesforce.com is a service that lets companies create, customize, integrate, and share on-demand applications over the Internet — all without needing to purchase or install software.
The service is comprised of two main parts: the AppExchange directory, an online marketplace for sharing on-demand applications, and the AppExchange platform on which those applications are developed. With AppExchange, companies can take advantage of a new, Internet-centric way of building applications that is dramatically simpler and more powerful than the approaches that have preceded it. As a directory, AppExchange is analogous to consumer Web sites like eBay and iTunes, in the way that it provides an open, community-based approach to distributing, reviewing, and acquiring applications.
As an on-demand platform, AppExchange is like traditional software-based tools, such as databases, operating systems, and application development environments, but is unique in the specific technologies it employs and the way it is delivered. Using AppExchange, companies, developers, and ISVs have an innovative and powerful new way of bringing the benefits of on-demand to all aspects of a company’s business.
We believe the AppExchange is the future of how On-Demand business applications will be bought and sold and therefore we took the decision to put all our applications on the AppExchange.
CEO, Tom Smith