We recently posted a research report by Nucleas Research (sorry, gotta enter your info to download) which found that Force.com application development provides 4.9 times faster development than Java and .NET development. There was some great comments that were surfaced as part of the study that I wanted to share.
One developer talked about an often overlooked aspect of Salesforce's cloud platform:
"Any time you develop you always have to be concerned with how it’s going to behave in the operating environment and keep up with software upgrades. We don’t have to worry about that. Traditionally, from one version to another there’s all the compatibility testing, code changes, continuous upgrades and huge infrastructure changes that have to be made to accommodate the latest releases. When your server needs to be upgraded you’ve got to match hardware and software to support custom apps. We don’t have to worry about any of that with Salesforce.com."
Another comment highlighted the speed with which apps could be developed:
“The beauty is I whip up requirements tonight and they have something for me to look at tomorrow and that doesn’t happen in traditional software. By the weekend I have something that meets my specific needs. In the traditional software model some of the things I wouldn’t even suggest because of the economics.”
And finally, my favorite comment:
“You don’t have to worry about, ‘Do I have a big enough database or enough servers?’ It all just goes away.”
The report is a good read, and could prove a useful tool in convincing your boss to let you try out Force.com for your next app dev project - check it out.