Cloud database comes at a price; free

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 08 December 2010 13:15

IT Industry - Strategy

Salesforce.com - one of the pioneers of the cloud computing movement - has unveiled an enterprise database designed to operate in the cloud which can be used for free for up to three users and 100,000 records.

Database.com, which leverages off the technology platform that underpins the salesforce.com customer relationship management system, is slated to be made available in 2011. Database access, file storage and automatic administration will be free for up to three users, 100,000 records and 50,000 transactions a month.

It will cost $US10 a month for each set of records beyond that and $US10 a month for each set of 150,000 transactions above that free threshold,

Enterprise services will cost $US10 per user per month and comprise user identity, authentication and row level security access controls.

Brian Prentice, research vice president for Gartner, said that 'My immediate observation is that this is Salesforce.com pushing down into the stack.

'They started at the application layer with CRM, then went to Platform as a Service with Force.com. Moving into the database areas seems a progression in terms of where they are going and it has relevance to their customers who are looking for a more comprehensive cloud solution,' said Mr Prentice.

Demand for cloud computing services is continuing to grow. Research conducted by Springboard Research for HP recently has found that 78 percent of Australian organisations now view cloud as relevant to their business, and 61 percent of Australian organisations are either currently using or planning cloud initiatives.