San Francisco-based Salesforce announced the technology alliances on Wednesday at a marketing event in New York.
Under the deal with IBM, companies can use IBM's WebSphere application server software and development kit to customize Salesforce's customer service and sales force productivity systems. Specifically, the IBM tools can help businesses pass customer and sales data between Salesforce and other business systems, the companies said.
Salesforce has similar agreements with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Borland and BEA Systems. Those deals were part of the launch last year of Sforce, a Salesforce program designed to let developers customize its applications and build new ones.
Through an expanded alliance with Sybase, Salesforce plans to let businesses more easily analyze customer and sales data stored within its programs using Sybase IQ, a data analysis tool. Companies will also be able to use the Sybase Replication Server program to shuttle data between Salesforce and other systems, the companies said.
Salesforce competes with Siebel, SAP, PeopleSoft, Epiphany and others in the market for customer relationship management software, a set of programs designed to track customer accounts and sales prospects. A key difference between Salesforce and many of its rivals is that the company relies on the Internet to give customers access to its software, which it maintains and runs on its own computers for a monthly fee.
