Connect Customers, Partners and More with Salesforce Communities Legacy technology has failed to deliver on the promise of connecting companies with their customers and partners. Existing offerings are either entirely conversational, such as discussion forums or entirely transactional, such as portals, and so are disconnected from the business. Today, more than ever, enterprises need to connect with their customers and partners in meaningful ways to increase efficiency and productivity. Combining the simplicity of developing groups and hangouts on the social Web with the trusted business processes salesforce.com is known for, companies will now be able to quickly deploy communities to:

-- Connect with Customers: Salesforce Communities will help social enterprises combine knowledge-driven, peer-assisted and agent-assisted customer service communities into a single unified experience giving customers better and faster service, every time. Companies will also be able to create a variety of marketing communities around events, campaigns or even spin up focus groups on the fly.

-- Connect with Partners: Companies, along with their partners, suppliers and distributors, can create custom communities to drive more sales through seamless deal registration, access to proven sales tools and collaboration with the right experts.

-- Connect with Any Community: Deploy communities to support any business process - from franchises sharing best practices, to high-end retailers delivering custom shopping experiences, to universities looking to connect students with alumni.

Deploy Private Social Communities Instantly with the Trust of Salesforce In order to be successful, companies must engage with the right people, at the right time - seamlessly across multiple communities. Because Salesforce Communities is built on the Salesforce Platform, the world's most-trusted cloud platform, companies will be able to:

-- Quickly build and deploy branded communities within minutes, all with the trust and private sharing model of the Salesforce Platform;

-- Move seamlessly across multiple communities with a single identity; and,

-- Scale instantly to support communities of all sizes - from a few people to communities with millions of members.

The number of social networking users has surpassed e-mail users. Nearly a quarter of all time spent online is spent on social networks like Facebook. People access the Internet more from mobile devices than from desktops. Salesforce.com is helping companies meet the challenge of this social revolution with its social enterprise solution. By providing new and more powerful ways for companies to connect with their customers and partners, the introduction of Salesforce Communities will continue to accelerate the industry's transformation to the social enterprise.

Pricing and Availability -- Salesforce Communities is currently scheduled to be available in limited pilot in fall 2012. -- Salesforce Communities is currently scheduled to be generally available the second half of 2013. -- Pricing of Salesforce Communities will be announced at general availability.