Russell Beattie

Very cool - Salesforce.com bought Sepia and launched AppExchange Mobile with 60 apps ready to go for Blackberry's and other enterprise handsets. From their press release:

"AppExchange Mobile solves key issues for both our customers and our partners. Our customers are eager for ways to extend their on-demand applications to the mobile workforce, and developers need a painless way to address this major opportunity," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "With AppExchange Mobile, there is no extra coding needed to develop an application on AppExchange and mobile-enable it. AppExchange Mobile is democratizing mobile applications, further extending the power, creativity and freedom of the on-demand model and The Business Web to our customers and partners on the move."

Wow, imagine that... A mobile platform. Kinda like Mobile Web 2.0 for Real... Whodathunk?!? I haven't actually seen any of the apps on my phone yet, so I don't know how well it works and whether it's just a version of the apps with no styling and no Javascript, but it's a good sign these guys are continuing their efforts this way. They've had a mobile version for quite a long time, but making it a priority is smart. I like Marc Benioff quite a lot since I saw him at the first Web 2.0 a couple years ago (1% to charity and all that), nice to see he's still living up to expectations. :-)

-Russ