Salesforce offers free mobile service

LONDON (Reuters) - Business software maker Salesforce.com Tuesday launched a slimmed-down version of its customer-management services that existing customers will be able to access for free using high-end mobile phones.

The company that pioneered software as a service -- managing customers' information and data remotely on a pay-as-you-go basis -- said it could reach 1 million users with its new Mobile Lite service.

Salesforce already has clocked up 70,000 downloads of its Apple iPhone version in seven months by customers on its more expensive, all-inclusive packages.

Mobile Lite will be available to customers using Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphones and phones running on Microsoft's Windows software as well as the iPhone, Salesforce said ahead of a company event in London Tuesday.

"The plan is to make it free. There is no plan to change it," Salesforce Chief Marketing Officer Kendall Collins told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Collins said he hoped customers using the free service would be tempted to upgrade to more expensive packages that include more mobile functions.

Mobile Lite allows customers, typically corporate salespeople, to access some of their company accounts and data and update them in real time while on the road.

"We don't have a forecast for what's going to happen," Collins said when asked how many people Salesforce expected for the new service. "It's going to really accelerate adoption. We think that the value of upgrading is going to sell itself."

Salesforce's offering is an example of so-called cloud computing, where customers connect via the Internet to software and data held for them at remote centres -- a model that is rapidly gaining momentum, partly due to economic conditions.