Salesforce.com converses in the clouds

Service Cloud brings together cloud computing platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.com to capture conversation and leverage community expert in the cloud.

In an interview with CRNBobby Napiltonia, SVP worldwide channel and alliances for Salesforce.com, said the launch of Service Cloud provides another opportunity to deliver world class solutions that are more predictable in cost/delivery.

“The partner revenue opportunity grows significantly as these are typically more complex and generally are migrated from older systems,” he said.

Although the vendor doesn’t have resellers in A/NZ, instead it has a referral program for partners to participate in.

“This shares the cost of sales with the partner and generally has a higher close and success rate,” claimed Napiltonia.

He said there has been significant interest from its current and potential partners as cloud computing is very important to "customers" at times when people are not buying hardware or software.

“The Service Cloud is made up of seven main components around the knowledge base to gather, distill and disseminate the expert knowledge found in the cloud to customers, agents and partners,” said Napiltonia.

Service Cloud packages start at US$995 per month, he said.

This includes the ability to, create an online customer community with unlimited usage for up to 250 customers; set up a contact centre with up to five agents; connect with native cloud computing sites like Facebook and Google; and invite up to five partners to participate in the service cloud.