February 7th, 2000, Salesforce.com officially launched at the IDG Demo 2000 conference. Salesforce.com launched its enterprise-class, web-based, sales force automation as a “Internet as a service”. XML APIs were part of Salesforce.com from day one. Salesforce.com identified that customers needed to share data across their different business applications, and APIs were the way to do this.
Marc R. Benioff, chairman and founder of salesforce.com stated,”Salesforce.com is the first solution that truly leverages the Internet to offer the functionality of enterprise-class software at a mere fraction of the cost.” Salesforce.com was the first cloud provider to take an enterprise class web application and API and deliver what we know today as�Software-as-a-Service.
Salesforce was one of the handful of pioneers who pushed HTTP XML and APIs to the forefront of businesses, and after a quarter century their APIs continue to be at the forefront of how you dominate sales using APIs, but many other business verticals. Alongside Microsoft and other top players, Salesforce is looking to transform itself into an artificial intelligence company as it looks to defend it’s platform.