02/25/2008

Salesforce.com announced the availability of the Force.com Toolkit for Adobe(R) AIR(TM) and Flex, a set of tools to enable development of rich Internet applications (RIAs) on salesforce.com's Force.com Platform. The toolkit will help developers create RIAs using Adobe RIA technologies. Developers can also publish applications built with Adobe Flex and deployed on Adobe AIR on the AppExchange marketplace.

ebizQ received the following:

The new Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex brings the power of Platform-as-a-Service to Adobe RIA technologies. With the toolkit, Flex developers now have direct access to the Force.com Web services API, allowing the easy creation of new user experiences and web applications that connect directly to Force.com's database, logic and workflow capabilities. And using the Adobe AIR component in the toolkit, information from Force.com can automatically be made available offline, allowing developers to extend their Force.com applications with Adobe AIR, bridging the real-time, dynamic capabilities of the Web with the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop.

"The new generation of platform and tools from companies like salesforce.com and Adobe is ushering in a new era of application development," said Adam Gross, vice president, platform marketing, salesforce.com. "Now Flex and other Web developers deploying on Adobe AIR have access to the full Platform-as-a-Service Force.com provides, allowing the capabilities of rich Internet applications -- already demonstrated in the consumer web -- to be easily united with the enterprise benefits of cloud computing. The opportunity for developers to create powerful and compelling applications for their businesses has never been greater."

"The ability to use Flex along with the Force.com Platform has allowed us to rapidly develop and deploy new, visually compelling on-demand applications for our clients," said Narinder Singh, co-founder, Appirio. "We plan to leverage the Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex to develop additional applications with a powerful user experience that drives adoption and business results for our customers."

"Using the new Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex, we have been able to create business applications that not only leverage the power of platform-as-a-service, but also are available both online and offline, and meet unique business requirements such as signature capture," says Adam Caplan, president of Model Metrics. "These applications can be deployed to thousands of users without the need to deploy a single server. Using Force.com and the new toolkit, it is as easy to deploy these applications as it is to create them."

"Adobe RIA technologies and Force.com are a powerful combination," said Michele Turner, vice president of product marketing and product management at Adobe. "Blending the leading technology platform for RIAs with the leading on-demand application platform means more effective, engaging applications delivered with less effort. We're entering an era in which developers can deliver truly rich enterprise applications on-demand, across platforms, both in the browser with Adobe Flash Player and now directly on the desktop with Adobe AIR."

The new toolkit joins the comprehensive set of resources and programs salesforce.com offers to let companies of all sizes create, deploy and sell on-demand applications for any business requirement. These include developer.force.com, salesforce.com's community of over 70,000 developers at http://developer.force.com, the Force.com Platform for creating apps, and the AppExchange marketplace for helping partners reach the salesforce.com customer base with their applications.