(June 3, 2003) - Salesforce.com has just launched sforce, the salesforce.com client/service application development utility, and has announced strategic alliances with BEA Systems, Borland, Microsoft, and Sun. Sforce allows business application developers to use tools they already know, combined with Web services provided by sforce, to rapidly develop and deploy business applications at a lower cost.

Strategic alliances with leading tool vendors allow developers to use products such as Sun's Sun ONE Studio tools, Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET, Borland JBuilder, and BEA WebLogic Workshop, with sforce providing core application services such as authentication, data management, document management, and text search.

The sforce Developer Program provides sample code, technical support, tools and salesforce.com Developer Edition at the sforce Web site. Deployment is $50/end user/month, plus $1/MB/month with the first three users and 10 MB are free for the first year. Support, sample code, and the salesforce.com Developer Edition are available online for free. Deployment is free for salesforce.com Enterprise Edition customers.