Salesforce.com Working on App for iPad

Salesforce.com is working on iPad applications for both its new collaboration software and its core sales management products, moves that bolster speculation the era of personal computers is waning. More and more of their customers are going mobile and Salesforce.com is moving with that trend.

They made this revelation at a conference where Salesforce launched Chatter, a software that allows employees to collaborate on projects and communicate with each other. It borrows from the look and feel of Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.

Salesforce executives told the conference crowd a version of Chatter that was native to Apple’s iPad tablet would be available later this year.

Chuck Ganapathi, the senior vice president in charge of Chatter development, also told Dow Jones that Salesforce’s core application would be available for the iPad in mid-2011. A native version of Chatter for Android phones also should be available later this year.

Salesforce’s embrace of mobile software comes as technology executives increasingly speculate that a new class of devices will supplant personal computers, which have been a mainstay office tool for decades. The speculation got a boost from comments made by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs at The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference earlier this month when he said tablets would overtake PCs, like cars overtook trucks.

Salesforce is working on a version of Chatter that will allow its customers to connect with outside clients and partners. Ganapathi told Dow Jones that Salesforce will apply the same security controls to that version of Chatter that have always applied to customer data housed in Salesforce. The idea is to make Chatter as easy to use as Facebook, but as secure as Salesforce.

Currently, the San Francisco-based company is testing a version of Chatter with the medical profession so that a patient team based in various locations can collaborate on patient care, Ganapathi added.