Offering as much diversity as the Apple app store, the Salesforce AppExchange has become one of the most diverse and popular choices for enterprise applications.
The AppExchange, which launched in 2006, is Salesforce’s cloud computing marketplace through which users are able to access, download, and install software apps.
At its inception the store was dubbed the ‘engine of change’ as the company aimed to provide businesses with a platform that would allow them to create and build applications, then run and integrate them.
One of the major benefits of this product is that it has helped to put Salesforce at the centre of an ecosystem that has seen a large amount of partnerships develop over the 10 years it has been running.
Some of the most popular apps that are available include: Marketo analytics and lead scoring, Cirrus Insight, Conga Composer, and Geopointe mapping analytics.
Essentially, the store offers an extremely diverse array of apps to help business users go about their jobs more effectively.
One of the reasons for its success is that it provides standardisation; this effectively makes it a lot easier for businesses to deploy applications. This is possible because the company has a single multi-tenant cloud environment, meaning that it offers a single code made.
Simply put, this means that Salesforce has certified the application and made sure that it works at scale. That’s a benefit for businesses because it means they don’t have to worry about how to plug it into their CRM system.
Applications are available for free, as well as on a yearly or monthly subscription model.
Current use of the service now sees around 3,000 apps hosted and almost 3.5 million installs. When compared to something like GooglePlay, which has exceeded 50 billion installs, it looks like a small amount, but the difference is in dealing with the consumer market vs B2B.
The AppExchange successfully tapped into the B2B enterprise cloud application market in a way that hadn’t been done before.
