Salesforce Chatter: The Arrival of Cloud 2

Salesforce.com, a leader in cloud computing technology, launched their latest Cloud 2 application, Chatter, on Tuesday. Chatter is the latest in social media applications, as it mimics Twitter and Facebook, but is for business users.

Salesforce’s social enterprise is a new way for people to work. It increases collaboration as there are many features including status updates, profiles, file-sharing and real-time news feeds. This will enable workers to stay informed of what their colleagues are doing so time is saved and productivity is increased. Employees get immediate information about their company’s projects, people, customers, documents, cases, programs, and business data with Chatter. Also, Chatter is completely secure so businesses do not have to worry about other companies or third parties gaining access to valuable information that is disclosed on Chatter.

Salesforce Chatter was initially released in private beta to 100 companies and it was overwhelmingly successful, which led Salesforce to expand Chatter to an additional 5,000 customers because of its high demand.

One of Salesforce’s customers, BCD Travel, commented on Chatter. “We operate in a market where success depends on accurate, real-time information,” said Katrina Bentley, director of CRM, BCD Travel. “Salesforce Chatter revolutionized how we operate and how executives stay on top of key deals, projects and clients in this dynamic environment. With Chatter, we were able to turn our custom apps into social enterprise apps that Chatter business data within minutes.”

Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO

Salesforce and its CEO, Marc Benioff, are very proud and excited about the release of Chatter. Benioff said, “Salesforce Chatter is the most exciting thing I’ve worked on in my career. Delivering Chatter is a seminal moment and one that marks the arrival of Cloud 2.”

Supposedly, Microsoft and Google are creating their own Twitter-like applications, which will inevitably create competition for Chatter. At least for now, in the business world, Salesforce Chatter is the dominant application.

Salesforce Chatter is now generally available for free to all of Salesforce’s 77,300 customers. Customers who are interested in purchasing Chatter that are not existing Salesforce customers can use it for $15 per user, per month.