Paul, First of all, thank you for sharing all this information
In this case it seems like a client is already using SalesForce and asking about doing some changes. So after this i've been asked about how many time it would take for a developer to get into the platform My first guess was a week, then i downloaded the manual (with > 300 pages) and i started thinking in two weeks, but if it's Java i don't think we'll be able to take it. We are doing PHP mostly, also FB apps, ASP, AS, but not Java >From what you are telling me, it seems like we might need to develop in Java, not in PHP, is this correct? best, Fernando On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Paul A Houle <p...@devonianfarm.com> wrote: > Fernando Gabrieli wrote: > >> Hi all, i'm working for a company which is considering creating a website >> using SalesForce >> >> I've been asked about how many time it would take for a developer to get >> into it >> >> Have you ever used it? How much did it take to you to get familiar? >> >> thanks in advance >> >> best regards >> Fernando >> >> I haven't made "Salesforce pages" (public-facing web sites that run on > the SF platform) but I have done some work with the API and I made it to > Dreamforce last year. > > From a technical point of view, you can develop public and private > facing SF applications with a system that's very similar to modern MVC > frameworks like CakePHP or symfony, but you'd do coding in a language > called APEX, which is derived from Java, and the database is somewhere > between SQL and NoSQL. There's a Web UI builder in the IDE for it, so you > can build simple pages with very little coding -- I saw a demo aimed at > marketing people where they were able to knock up a form in the builder in > about five minutes. Particularly looking at the API I see a lot of > similarities between the SF platform and the Facebook platform, but SF is > really optimized for classic OLTP applications and doesn't have the > specializations for large social networks that you see in sites like FB or > LinkedIn. > > That said, I find the business of Salesfore puzzling. I like building > web sites that are supported by advertising, so think in terms of eCPM, > which is typically between $0.25-$5.00 for the sites I make. Pages hosted > on the SF platform cost $1.00 eCPM to host, which would eat an unacceptable > amount of my profits... Particularly when the costs of a more conventional > system (MySQL/PHP, or MSSQL/ASP.NET) is probably 1/100 that assuming > reasonable scale and utilization. SF has an ARPU of around $1000 a year... > If it wasn't possible to provision a similar kind of service for 1/1000 the > price, it wouldn't be possible for Facebook to exist. You'd think, given > the prices they charge, SF would have good margins, but according to what > they file with the S.E.C., Salesforce.com's margins are much much smaller > than those of Amazon Web Services! > > In the back end, SF has several big clusters that center around an > instance of Oracle 10g, and they buy lots of gold plated hardware. The > reliability of SF is excellent, and performance is really good for OLTP > work, but the platform is weak for analytics, network analysis and > anything that doesn't fit into its paradigm... They charge something like > $1K / month/ GB for database storage, which is just nuts... They could be > storing it in RAM for what they're charging. > > Overall, if your company is already using SF and you want to build > applications that communicate with your SF database in an OLTP manner, SF > pages are a reasonable way to go. If you don't already have a commitment to > SF, I'd stay away. They like to recall the days that they were a > disruptive upstart, but I think 10 years from now they're going to be seen > as an over-the-hill high cost provider. > > _______________________________________________ > New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List > http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > > http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation >
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