Salesforce to productise politics

NOT CONTENT with hypergrowth in the business world, ubiquitous on-demand software pioneer Salesforce.com is moving into politics after providing the underlying CRM program for US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's ComMitt fundraising efforts.

Political campaigns have traditionally been concocted using a ham-handed combination of chewing gum and string but the face of the Salesforce platform probably fits for anybody seeking a highly distributed and shareable programme that is accessible over the web.

Having done the deed for Romney, Salesforce wants to productise its work in a programme called CampaignForce that will be distributed on the AppExchange trading site for Salesforce-compatible programs. It won't have escaped Salesforce's attention that this could also act as a jemmy to bigger deals in the lucrative government market, of course. Well, CEO Marc Benioff has admitted that his favourite book is that how-to book of cunning stratagems, Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Of course, the flip side of getting involved in politics is that people will try to tag you with a bias one way or the other and keep a careful eye on where you're spending your money. µ