Spring '08 release provides tools for controlling unstructured data

Salesforce.com is making its big move into enterprise content management with the latest release of its on-demand platform.

The Spring ’08 version gives a debut to Salesforce Content, a means of searching, managing and versioning unstructured data via approaches familiar from the consumer web, such as tagging, pushed notifications of new or changed material, popularity polling, feedback comments and other tools that are often banded together under the umbrella term of “folksonomy”.

While Salesforce Content is unlikely to match the depth of traditional enterprise content management tools that serve the most sophisticated needs of information managers, supporters contend that they could provide an easy-to-use solution for most requirements. Salesforce gained the technology underlying Content with the acquisition last year of startup firm, Koral.

However, Salesforce Content won’t be able to do handle data that does not reside on the web and it will incur a fee. Salesforce plans to charge $35 per user per month for the new tools.

CMS Watch analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe said:“It’s certainly not a Documentum or FileNet killer, nor do I think it is a SharePoint killer, but it is potentially a nice toolset. What it should do is provide some good file sharing and collaboration facilities, primarily to existing Salesforce.com users. CRM will always involve collaboration and file sharing [and] the context for so many client issues sits within a form or document somewhere. Where it makes less sense is in the idea of yet another repository or content silo. The back-end repository needs to either integrate or be searchable, or be potentially exposed as a web service, to ensure that content is managed holistically.”

Spring ’08 also makes generally available the Ideas tool that lets Salesforce users recommend features to the software developer. Firms can now let users, partners and others suggest Ideas, create discussions and list most popular contributions for their own products and services.