Salesforce has become one of those big mamas of web based software - it is one of the most successful and widely used solutions today, and it is truly web based. The main structure of the service that Salesforce offers is a CRM, a Customer Relationship Management system, but due to their efforts with what they call the Force.com AppExchange, a user can customise Salesforce to get a whole host of powerful applications.

Salesforce is an ambassador for the oft used term to describe current trends in Internet based software: 'Cloud Computing'. As a corporate user of salesforce, you install no central software packages, and store no data locally - everything is kept on server farms at Salesforce. The upside is a fantastic lowering of implementation times, and no worries about regular updates or technical issues. Many business owners and managers of course worry about the security of their data, and the impact that a huge crash at Salesforce could have on the operations of their business.

I have implemented a Salesforce system, customised it, used AppExchange add ons, and used it functionally in day to day business. It really is a powerful system, with most of that power coming from the ability of the end user to customise what is fundamentally a very clever rules based database and easy to use graphical interface. You can relate bits of data to each other in a multitude of different ways, you can create hierarchies and time-lines to meaningfully connect people to each other, people to businesses, and sales and marketing efforts and outcomes customers and suppliers. You can easily create reports on any stage of your business process, depending on how much data you put in.

Salesforce demonstrates the immense value that can be added both to companies operating 'software as a service', and the customers they serve. Because Salesforce, and all the data any given user has stored in his or her instance of it, is already online, it is a simple feat to integrate a lot of functionality to mobile devices and other online (and offline) applications. Salesforce has teamed up with Google to offer fully fledged integration with the Google Apps suite of business tools (resulting in Google Docs being linked within Salesforce, easy emailing of customers from within salesforce using Gmail, and syncing of contacts and calendars in Google with records and tasks in Salesforce. You can also chat in real time with other users of Salesforce within your organisation from within Salesforce, using Google Talk...of course Google Maps is always great as well).

If you prefer Microsoft, the process is a little more long winded, but you can download small plug ins for all the Microsoft Office applications to allow data, documents, contacts and mail to be accessed by salesforce.

Whilst it may suffer some of the downsides of becoming a big corporation after being an innovative startup (poor customer service, becoming invested in conservative business strategies as opposed to constant innovation etc.), the foresight of creating a powerful underlying functionality to an online system, and then allowing independent developers to create novel applications that utilise the power of that underlying functionality means that whilst Salesforce itself does not need to change too drastically, it can keep filling new niches, and keep innovating in old ones. With Apps available for Financial Services, Education, Health-care, Real Estate, Public Services and many other industry sectors, Salesforce is of course far more than a simple CRM system. Definitely a model to follow - surprising that there hasn't been more like this.