Salesforce.com unveils cloud database and free Chatter

Company makes announcements at its Dreamforce event is San Francisco

Salesforce.com is to launch what it claims is the world's first enterprise database built for the cloud.

Unveiled at the Dreamforce user event in San Francisco, the Database.com solution will launch in 2011, Salesforce said.

The move will see the software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist go head-to-head with Oracle in the database market.

The relational database will be sold as a service, through subscriptions rather than software licences.

The company added that the solution is open, meaning businesses can use it with any app, written in any language, running on any platform or any device. The solution also makes it easy to build next generation business apps, which are mobile and social, according to the firm.

Database.com is the same database technology and infrastructure that powers Salesforce.com, which more than 87,000 customers are using today.

Basic Database.com services, which include database access, file storage and automatic administration, will be free for three users, and up to 100,000 records and 50,000 transactions per month. It will be $10 (around £6.35) per month for each set of 100,000 records beyond that, and $10 per month for each set of 150,000 transactions beyond that.

Database.com Enterprise Services will be priced at $10 per user per month and include user identity, authentication and row-level security access controls.

Free Chatter

Salesforce also announced that it is offering a free version of its popular collaboration platform Chatter to all of the firm's business customers.

The platform allows employees to work more efficiently and closely with colleagues on the firm's own private and secure social network. Updates on the people, projects, and data are automatically pushed to each user.

Chatter has taken off among businesses in its first few months of operation, with over 60,000 companies already deploying the application since its launch.