Force.com and Salesforce.com
In order to understand the difference between salesforce.com and force.com, one must understand the basic cloud computing concepts. Salesforce is a company and Salesforce.com is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application developed based on Software as a Service (SaaS). Force.com is a platform that helps developers and business users to build powerful enterprise applications.
Salesforce is a SaaS product, which contains in-built Out of Box (OOB) functionalities that enables a CRM system to automate your sales, marketing, services, etc. Some of the examples of SaaS are Dropbox, Google Apps and GoToMeeting, which refers to taking the software from your computer and transferring it to cloud. Force.com is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) product; it contains a platform for you to build applications. Force.com enables you to customize the applications, business logic and User Interface. In simple terms, the functionality of Salesforce.com in iPhone application stores contacts, text messages, make calls, and other standard functions. The applications are built and operated in force.com. Salesforce.com works on the Force.com, similar to iPhone dialer works on the iPhone OS.
What makes Salesforce.com SaaS and Force.com PaaS?
If you buy the Salesforce.com license, the package has prebuilt models such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. This enables you to start loading the leads, run reports and much more. In contrast, Force.com provides no access to leads, or run reports. You need to build applications, tabs, and other workflow designs that can be used according to your system requirement. All the features of Force.com are available in Salesforce.com thus; Salesforce.com is built on the platform of Force.com. If you purchase Salesforce.com licenses, you will get all the normal tabs like leads, accounts and more with a facility to customize the complete platform using Force.com. The Force.com license is three times cheaper than Salesforce.com. More time and effort is required to any functionality in Force.com than Salesforce.com. Force.com develops and delivers customized applications within a short period. These applications are automatically connected to all of the Salesforce data and use APIs to connect with external data. Force.com includes security controls to handle the applications and permit users to delete, edit, view, or create only specific applications. Salesforce.com is fully mobilized and encompasses all the customers’ details so you can close the deals easily. This provides customers’ updates. Salesforce.com is leading the social CRM by targeting its customers, and achieves social CRM objectives. Force.com uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or Visualforce to develop entirely new applications of your choice. Salesforce.com helps in hassle-free environment for building applications.