Salesforce.com Joins Vendors Trying To Solve Data Glut Problem 2Salesforce.com Joins Vendors Trying To Solve Data Glut Problem 2

Businesses are struggling under loads of digital data, and vendors are getting hip to the opportunities. Salesforce.com is jumping into the game, and announced on Tuesday that later this year it will offer new content-management offerings that stem from its acquisition in March of a tiny company called Koral Technologies.

Salesforce Content is an area of the business that will include a development platform called Apex Content, and content management software called ContentExchange that customers will be able to access over the Internet for a monthly subscription fee. The goal of this new business is to "liberate customers from complex content management software like EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint," said CEO Marc Benioff in a statement.

This year, for the first time, the amount of digital information generated will surpass the available storage capacity, according to IDC. The infoglut has brought new focus to the practice of information management, and EMC, IBM, Microsoft, and others are rushing to market with offerings designed to help companies better access and manage data.

Salesforce describes Apex Content as "platform services" for unstructured data such as office documents, HTML, video and audio files, and e-mail. Developers will be able to use Apex Content to create new kinds of content-management applications that use a customizable Ajax user interface.

ContentExchange, meanwhile, will be a ready-to-use app with features that include the ability to share documents, tag documents for easy location (similar to what the Flickr Web site has done with photos), and let users "subscribe" to documents, topics, and authors. Salesforce gives the example of a user in legal department who can automatically get updates on any documents affected by Sarbanes-Oxley compliance by subscribing to such a service.