I have always been impressed with the architecture and design of the Salesforce.com platform ever since I started looking at it.  The multitenant solutions they have found to common problems such as:

  • how to handle security at an organization, user, profile and field levels
  • how to manage data between the client and the backend (ORM)
  • how to create extendable, intuitive and attractive user interfaces

and bring it all together in one marketable platform is really an epic endeavor which they accomplished with grace.

I often ask myself, “how did they do it?  What technologies did they use under the covers to provide this platform and these services?”  To get a glimpse into these questions, watch the video below where Walter Macklem, CTO of the Force.com Platform, talks specifically about the following behind the scenes topics.

Data Infrastructure:

  • Building blocks of the Force.com services
  • Hardware Topology
  • Relational Database
  • Distributed File System
  • Search
  • High Availability
  • Backups
  • Disaster Recovery

Multitenant Data Management:

  • Platformatize the raw data infrastructure to make it work for the cloud.
  • Enable multiple customers to utilize a shared resource pool.

Internal Development with Data:

  • Dogfooding.  How do internal Salesforce engineers build on top of this multitenant data platform?