

Quite a few people were scratching their heads when Salesforce.com added Heroku to its list of acquisitions. After all, why on earth would Salesforce with its Force.com SaaS platform feel the need to buy up a PaaS platform like Heroku?
Now, it seems we finally have our answer, with the release of a new Heroku Connect tool that connects Heroku’s cloud application platform to Salesforce’s own database offering. The idea is simple enough: Salesforce wants enterprise app developers to do their work on Force.com, while consumer app developers will use Heroku.
As for Heroku Connect, this is what links the two together. It’s useful because Force.com remains the place for custom app development, while Heroku takes care of all the work that goes into delivering web applications at scale. And now with Heroku Connect, this allow for the quick and easy transfer of data between the two platforms.
It’s actually always been possible to move between the two, noted Salesforce’s Scott Holden in an interview with TechCrunch. However, it wasn’t always an easy process, and one that required going through APIs. The problem is that Salesforce is built on Oracle software, while Heroku uses its own variant of Postgres, and so the two platforms each offer developers a very different environment. Heroku Connect simplifies the previously complex process of linking the two, allowing anyone to connect them without the assistance of an experienced development team.
One of the big advantages, according to Salesforce, is that Heroku Connect allows developers to feed customer-generated data into business apps more easily, enhancing its overall value proposition.
Essentially, what Salesforce has done is throw in a nice piece of middleware to connect two very divergent aspects of its platform – something that’s common enough with most major IT tech giants. Over time, Salesforce may integrate Heroku further into its other offerings, but for now at least developers finally have a way to connect the two worlds more easily.
THANK YOU