Featured Articles

Salesforce App Vendors Unite to Form Cloud Collective

By Laura Stotler
TMCnet Contributing Editor

The Salesforce SaaS (News - Alert) community has united to form the Cloud Collective, an expanded ecosystem designed to promote third-party business apps available to Salesforce users. The group is based on Salesforce’s AppExchange portal, which aggregates third-party apps across a variety of categories.

The membership-based Cloud Collective has nine inaugural app vendors who have committed to work together to educate users about apps and integrations as well as to secure and recommend new businesses. Many of the group’s members already share an integrated workflow, and the organization plans to take advantage of that to further align member relationships.

The group reflects a growing trend of partners and even former competitors working together toward a common goal. As more companies shift their emphasis toward providing choice and the highest levels of service to their customers, they are realizing the benefits of offering enhanced and collaborative solutions that include a variety of features and high value.

Companies in the Cloud Collective offer SaaS solutions that work with Salesforce in the areas of gamification, analytics, geo-mapping, backup, project management, unified communications and productivity. The group plans to expand to include additional categories as the Salesforce1 AppExchange grows. Current members include Arrowpointe, Bizible, Bracket Labs, Cirruspath, Esna, LevelEleven, RingLead, Spanning and UberConference.

"By aligning forces with top innovators in the Salesforce1 AppExchange, the Cloud Collective hopes to further educate the Salesforce community about the variety of apps at their fingertips and better serve the distinct needs of sales, customer support, marketing and IT teams," said Ryan Huff, CEO and co-founder, Cirruspath.

According to Ron Huddleston, senior vice president of the global AppExchange & Partner Program for Salesforce, the company’s partners are increasingly looking for new ways to interact with each other as well as their customers and employees. The Cloud Collective facilitates that business model by offering customers a variety of social, mobile and connected cloud apps to help them achieve their core business initiatives.