On January 14, 2016 the Salesforce AppExchange turned 10 years old. That makes it more than 2 years older than the iPhone App Store, which opened on July 10, 2008! For those of you unfamiliar with the AppExchange, it's a catalog of applications built by Salesforce partners that enables customers to add functionality to their use of Salesforce. Do you want to add Human Resources (HR), Supply Chain (ERP), or financial features? There's an app (well dozens) for that. On the collaboration side, do you want to add web-conferencing or task management? There's an app for that.
When choosing a vendor, one of the most important things to consider is how vibrant the company's business partner ecosystem is. The more partners a company has, the more features and functionality will be available. A flourishing partner ecosystem shows that developers have faith that the platform is a leader, and someone they want to invest their time and money on. With close to 3000 apps now available for Salesforce, it's quite clear that 3rd party developers feel confident Salesforce is a company they need to build products for.
To get started building applications for Salesforce, visit their developer site named Trailhead for documentation and tutorials.
The Salesforce AppExchange created the model that several other software companies have strived to emulate. Collaboration vendors such as Box, Clarizen, Google Apps, Microsoft Office, Podio and Slack now offer integrated catalogs of their own.
Here is an infographic that Salesforce created to highlight some key milestones.
