Benioff announced Database.com to a crowd of 14,000 at the company's annual customer meeting in San Francisco. Customers will access the product, stored on Salesforce computers, over the Internet as part of a trend known as cloud computing.
"Databases need to be in the cloud," Benioff said, referring to the emerging market as a "massive" market opportunity. "You can use Database.com from any language, from any device."
The news comes amid the rapid growth of cloud computing. Global revenue from cloud services is expected to grow 16.6% to $68.3 billion this year, and more than double to $148.8 billion by 2014, according to technology consultancy Gartner Inc.
Oracle declined to comment. Zane Adam, who manages Microsoft's Azure cloud computing technology, said Microsoft's SQL Azure database was built for the cloud.
"Tens of thousands of Microsoft customers are already using SQL Azure for large-scale cloud applications," added Adam.
Ironically, Salesforce will use Oracle technology to reach new customers with its cloud-based database service. Oracle's database technology has long been part of the infrastructure of Salesforce's products.
According to Gartner, the database systems marketplace is worth $21.2 billion.
A key advantage of Database.com, according to the salesforce, will be users' ability to focus on building applications on top of Database.com, rather than having to focus on the management and maintenance of a locally stored database. Salesforce also touted the database's flexibility, noting that developers can write applications for it in a variety of languages such as Oracle's Java and on a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Azure.
At the conference, some Salesforce customers who currently use Oracle's database said they are interested in learning more about Database.com. Alan Farnsworth, the chief information officer at Bausch & Lomb Inc., for example, said he likes the idea of Database.com's promised flexibility, scalability and easier integration of unstructured data.
Salesforce To Compete With Oracle
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