Force.com

Force.com is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) product designed to simplify the development and deployment of cloud based applications and websites. Developers can create apps & websites through the cloud IDE & deploy them quickly to Force.com multi-tenant servers.

It is used to create and deploy next-generation cloud apps. Because there are no servers or software to buy or manage, developers can focus solely on building apps that include built-in social and mobile functionality, business processes, reporting and search. Apps run on a secure, proven service that scales tunes and backs up data automatically.

Benefits of Force.com:

• Proven
• Agile
• Social
• Mobile

Salesforce Environments

An environment is an instance of Force.com platform which can also be called an organization. Salesforce Environments lets users access, deploy or create applications with various feature sets, depending on the configuration of the environment.

A good way to think about an instance of Force.com, is to think about Gmail: when users sign up for Gmail, they get a unique username and access to their private email account in the cloud. Similarly, when users sign up for a Force.com organization, they get a unique username and private access to their Force.com cloud computing environment.

Characteristics of an Environments:

• Contains data (records) and customizations.
• Each environment is based on an edition, which contains specific functionality and limits.
• Can be accessed through a web browser.

Types of Salesforce Environments:

There are three types of Environments:

• Production Environments
• Development Environments
• Testing Environments