Sometimes it starts with this simple question; What is Salesforce?
Salesforce, word is used for the product ecosystem (mostly, CRM mainly).
Salesforce.com, preferable Salesforce Inc, is used for the name of the company.
Force.com, is used for the platform (PaaS) that the Salesforce.com products run on and where Salesforce Developers develop their codes on.
Is Salesforce (platform) SaaS or PaaS?
Salesforce as a whole is a good example for PaaS. We are able to build our own custom software and use the infrastructure provided by Salesforce Inc. When you read older text on this question, they may write Salesforce is a SaaS. This is because, in the older days, Salesforce emerged in the market as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution. Salesforce’s commitment was to provide an online tool that keeps the records of the business. Later, Salesforce Inc, created Force.com as a platform where we were able to create our own software. Last few years, “Force.com” is no a popular marketing word to mention the PaaS division of Salesforce. Instead, Salesforce word is widely used.
In my perspective, “Salesforce” word has all these meanings in the sentence according to purpose of who uses it. In a development environment, when I mean “I develop my code on Salesforce”, it refers to the PaaS infrastructure of the system. In a business meeting with a client, in which, the client wants a CRM system, they may use sentence “Salesforce will be core of our business”. They mean “Salesforce CRM” software by using single Salesforce word.
I joined many business meetings where people used a single “Salesforce” word to mean either “Salesforce Marketing Cloud”, “Salesforce Service Cloud”, “Salesforce Communities Cloud”, “Salesforce Pardot” or other software. The meaning depends on who uses it. It is good to have a broad understanding of variable Salesforce products to catch what they mean. It may sound difficult, as you progress learning Salesforce ecosystem, you will become familiar with all of these.
If you follow me, I will write more detailed articles on Salesforce. You will learn how to write your own custom applications, apply your own business logic with Salesforce tools and have a good understanding of Salesforce as a whole.
My aim is to provide you as much experience as much I gained during my Salesforce journey of ten years.
If you are interested in, you can visit my website ForceJournal.com and watch the latest videos of known Salesforce gurus. Every day I add new resources to ForceJournal.com for myself to get a better understanding of Salesforce.
Thank you for reading.