Salesforce.com is preparing to unveil a web-based service oriented architecture (SOA) platform later today at its Developer Conference in Santa Clara, California. 

A preview of the platform is scheduled for availability by September and will be available on a subscription basis in a similar way to the firm's customer relationship management (CRM) service.

Salesforce did not release pricing information nor a projected launch date for the final product.

SOAs offer a way to build componentised business applications, allowing firms to build a capability such as single sign-on or currency conversion and reuse it across several applications.

The programming technique borrows heavily from the world of web services, which allow companies to share data between departments and with partners in a standard way.

Salesforce touted its hosted SOA as a way to integrate web services with billing, inventory and order entry systems, as well as connect with web services from enterprise applications from vendors such as Oracle and SAP.

The SOA market is dominated by data and system integration players such as BEA's Aqualogic, IBM's WebSphere and Tibco. 

These vendors offer server products that manage service life cycles, repositories that offer developers an overview of all available services, or governance tools that track development progress and the adoption of services.

Salesforce did not specify which SOA management services it will offer, but highlighted the fact that users will be able to access the services as a hosted platform.

The firm hopes that hosted SOA will follow in the footsteps of its CRM product and appeal to businesses looking to save on software licensing, hardware and maintenance fees for traditional software.

"It is non-disruptive. You do not have to invest lots of money in hardware and software and dedicated skills to bring this all together," René Bonvanie, director of Salesforce's AppExchange, told vnunet.com.