Early this September, the SalesForce team released Lightning Platform. Lightning is the next generation of the Salesforce1 Platform. During the introduction of Lightning, the team announced that “Sales Cloud has been rebuilt from the ground up with Lightning Experience and more than 25 new innovations to set a new standard for CRM”. The Lightning Framework is the first step of Salesforce’s plan to tie developers into a seamless integration to provide customized applications. The three main components that were released are
- Lightning Design System with Lightning Components- the tool’s customization engine. It provides the framework for building apps with the Salesforce design language that support multiple devices, browsers and operating systems. This is a rebranding of an already existing “Aura on the Platform“ initiative.
- Lightning Experience- Bringing the whole UI experience to the customer. More information at a glance with charts and graphs to enable sales people to sell more, for on the move sales person. Streamlining process and workflow. SalesForce Wave (release last year) the data visualization tool has been used to make the experience seamless and customizable.
- Finally it includes Lightning App Builder, which builds upon the Salesforce 1 application development platform. Innovative, yet a very simple way to build applications on top of the Salesforce CRM tool.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WsU0_ghZ_Q
Interest in AppBuilder has always been high because of it’s a revolutionary new way of building apps. The App Builder helps create engaging applications with drag-and-drop components for everything from standard fields, reports and charts, to partner-built components. With this App Builder one can design apps just any which way; in the device you are designing for – a tablet, a phone, a wearable device or a desktop. Why is this important? Small to medium players, will now be able to attract or retain the SalesForce customer base, with minimal costs and still remain competitive. Initially, there were apprehensions, if developers would be interested to code and build exclusively for SalesForce based on a proprietary technology. But with the AppBuilder and Components, SalesForce has made it easier for a larger audience to now create apps and be actively engaged as a community.
Interestingly, there are users on Quora who are trying to understand the learning curve for developing on the SalesForce platform to take it up as a full time career-option. Other related query, especially with components and Lightning has generated interest for app-developers, hard-core developers and those with interesting business ideas.
If you thought, SalesForce was the only company to invest in drag-drop app-builder in cloud computing, you are in for a surprise. Google has quietly (I say this, because not too many news sites covered it) purchased Divshot early this month, a tiny Los Angeles-based start-up for app developers, a move to capture the cloud computing platform. The acquisition is confirmed by an official Divshot blog entry. Basically, Divshot’s technology lets app developers use drag-and-drop tools to create smooth and efficient user interfaces. Divshot will be a part of Firebase the app-development developer focussed group within Google.
Whether SalesForce App Builder and DivShot for Google are going to be competing for cloud computing app-development is something we need to wait and watch for.
