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Salesforce: How The Platform Builds New Software

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Every technology company wants to be a ‘platform’ company these days. If we understand a platform to be a core base of software that is functionally expansive enough to shoulder, support and propel other related and/or auxiliary technologies, then Windows is a platform… because you can ‘run apps’ on it.

In the same vein then, we see firms with a core technology base of one kind or another now working to position themselves as platforms. If you’ve made it to platform status then other vendors see your ‘environment’ and user base as valuable enough to want to a) provide other application nuances to run on top of it and b) provide APIs to connect other applications to it.

If Salesforce was initially known as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) organization, then today the firm insists that it has become thicker and wider (Salesforce spin doctors would say ‘richer’) version of itself. Indeed, the firm insists that it is a platform and claims to have ‘thousands of ISVs’ on its platform via its AppExchange.

Apps in the cloud

Catching up with the Benioff bandwagon, the firm has recently moved its developer relations lead Adam Seligman into a new position as head of App Cloud. Not a job designation that usually even exists, is this a direct spin to sell us the Salesforce app platform line? Could this be a clue to a more developer-centric more app-centric ‘hey’ we’re a platform for other apps’ version of Salesforce?

Seligman insists that the platform question has been “put to rest” and explains that he grew the Salesforce developer community from 600,000 to 2.3 million during his five-year tenure in his previous role. The company currently states that more than 5.5 million apps have already been built using the Salesforce App Cloud. But what is it, how does it work and do programmers actually think of it as a software platform with a corresponding runtime and set of tools in the same way that they talk about Java, for example?

Don’t reinvent the wheel: the rise of low-code

Seligman is fast to point us to Force.com, a ‘low-code’ app development platform. The term itself refers to software application development where a large degree of the base components parts are already catered for and provided -- the coding instead comes in the form of what we are supposed to call ‘intelligent customization’ designed to reflect actual Line of Business goals. There’s no need to hard code a calculator, a basic currency converter or many other core component elements of software, these things can be reused from elsewhere.

According to Forrester, the US$1.7 billion low-code platform market (of which Salesforce already claims to own a third of the share) will explode into a US$15 billion market by 2020. The Salesforce App Cloud also includes Heroku, which is essentially Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology in and of itself for building applications in the cloud. Indeed, the Heroku pledge reads, “Don’t reinvent the wheel. Heroku’s 150+ third-party add-ons, 1000+ open source buildpacks and 3000+ ready-to-deploy Heroku Buttons provides a rich ecosystem of pre-integrated extensions and services.”

But Salesforce can’t be the next Windows or Linux and presumably doesn’t want to be… it wants to provide a componentized world of pick and mix functionality right?

“Every CIO is chasing digital transformation. The key to that is apps, the motor that’s changed the how we do everything from hailing cabs, buying groceries and running entire companies. Our mission is simple: help companies to build the next generation of apps that connect with their customers in a whole new way. App Cloud eliminates the hurdles - infrastructure, technology, skill sets - that have slowed and hobbled enterprise app development,” said Seligman.

So it’s all about building apps not infrastructure right… doesn’t it still require a degree of architectural infrastructural know-how to be able to understand what infrastructure needs to work as underpinning technology for every use case?

“We’re seeing a new trend, of increasingly sophisticated apps that blend microservices from Heroku with core Force.com for customer data and transactional logic. App Cloud addresses the two sides of every app: the side your customers use, and the side you run the business on,” said Seligman. “There are a mountain of new technologies to play with in this space. We pioneered containers and the whole space of Docker and container orchestration is evolving fast.  But despite all the excitement, the best dev teams have a zen-like quality to them: they focus on features for their customers, instead of noodling on the infrastructure du jour.  They spend every calorie of DevOps on building a great product for the customers.”

A snapshot from the future

As per IDC’s last count, there are ‘only’ 20 million software developers in the world, is low-code the answer to this ‘shortage’ as we all try to digitize? Seligman agrees that we have crushing demand for new, innovative applications in every facet of our lives. He claims that his firm is providing “a snapshot from the future” because not everyone who builds apps on App Cloud is an expert programmer -- and that’s by design.

Today Salesforce is working to finesse the way it works with developers. What’s coming is a marketplace that’s not just for apps, but also for components, algorithms and other smaller elements.

“In many cases, customers don’t need a whole app, they just need a few components they can drop in with Lightning App Builder and solve a business problem. These components can be as simple as multi-view calendars and maps, but they add powerful functionality to apps. We’re racing to get the AppExchange ready for this next generation of app development,” said Seligman.

An end to Java (or other languages/platforms)?

But away from vendor-specific talk like this, we know that coders list Java and other language competencies on their resume ‘above’ vendor-specific skills. Does Seligman realistically ever think this could change?

“I studied as a computer scientist and languages - so many and in such variety - are core to how we are trained.  Language skills will always be an important skill to market. But the cloud, mobile and social revolution has taught us the end result - the app - is the thing that matters. Smart engineers who understand customers are at the heart of the products they build will do well and I think we have a great chance to grow our footprint with this audience.  Nobody is going to pry JavaScript out of developers’ hands; our play is to embrace every language and framework, while also bringing Lightning development to the table, where you can rapidly click instead of code,” he concluded.

As Seligman has agreed, Salesforce (or any other major platform player) is not about to replace Java or any other set of code… but the vendor-specific (sometimes low-code) application platform is part of the way we now build software.

 

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