If you are in the salesforce.com ecosystem, you have probably heard about Salesforce1. It’s a new landscape for the salesforce.com platform, making it easier than ever to deliver all of the same great functionality, now in the palm of your hand. This announcement changes both how we develop with Salesforce platforms, and what it means to be a developer in this space. In this blog post, I'll breakdown the top five takeaways from the Salesforce1 announcement.

Apps with open API's

Salesforce has given developers the ability to connect to everything, with stronger, more flexible API's. They are opening up everything in the cloud so developers can connect applications to all products in the salesforce.com family. Being able to connect everything with the API's means that every developer should be thinking outside the box when designing a solution. Not every application is best in Apex/Visualforce. Now you can build your application in the framework and language of your choice and bring it into Salesforce using Heroku and Canvas. This is a strong move, opening up the possibility to incorporate more mainstream mobile and cloud applications into the Salesforce ecosystem. Force.com CLI tool

I live at the command line, so I have a soft spot for this one. When I first saw the CLI tool at the developer keynote, I immediately thought of ways I could use itâ€”releases, generating test data, running anonymous apex, and never logging into workbench again. Seeing this CLI 100% in Google Go was great too, I’ve wanted to work in Google Go for a while, with it’s a fast, verbose language. The Force.com CLI tool ties into my next point: making useful tools, open sourcing them so outside developers can contribute but still supporting them. I’ve already made my first contribution with a new command, and I’m looking forward to more opportunities. Check out the source code and instructions for more information. Open source commitment

As someone who has used different libraries/gems/plugins to get started quickly with the Salesforce API, this commitment to open source is huge step forward. The Heroku/Salesforce team will now support and contribute to the popular open source plugins, which makes it easy to get started with the APIs. The examples they gave, Kevin O’Hara’s node.js plugin nforce and EJ Holmes’ ruby gem restforce, both interact with the REST API. I predict that that if the Salesforce dev community builds and adopts other similar plugins, salesforce.com will follow suit. This reaffirms the support of the developer teams at Salesforce and Heroku, giving us better ways to quickly interact via the API, and building connected apps. Heroku integrated... finally

Everywhere I turned at Dreamforce I saw Heroku. The consensus was clearly excitement that Salesforce had finally integrated Heroku into the ecosystem. Besides the new tools and the open source commitments, the Heroku Connect functionality stood out to me. Heroku Connect brings the ability to sync data bi-directionally between Salesforce and the Heroku PostgreSQL database. Additionally, developers are now given an external data store for archiving/storing large tables outside of Salesforce. This is a sign of more to come, leveraging Heroku to shore up some Salesforce gaps including complex processes like text and data parsing, complex analytics, data mining, real time processing, and data warehousing. The Salesforce1 mobile app

With Salesforce1, salesforce.com customers have a powerful mobile container to manage their business from anywhere. That Salesforce1 mobile application finally brings the end to the repeated attempts to build a useful mobile application. The new mobile solution delivers an open ended platform, with all the powers of core Salesforce functionality. This allows anyone to utilize all of the previously existing functionality—rather than an application that only solves only a small set of use cases, with 3rd party applications delivering specific solutions. With Salesforce1, Salesforce did what they do best, deliver a mobile application as a platform to use existing functionality, with the option to build new functionality that is use case specific. You can watch a video on the Salesforce1 platform and app here.

I expect the Salesforce developer community to grow within these new frameworks. Salesforce.com is positioning itself as an enticing platform to build native apps, and with a bolstered Heroku, they are opening the door to more app integration. Check out the brand new Salesforce1 developer site and build your first Salesforce1 app, if you haven't already.

To see how the top salesforce.com customers are using mobile, check out the free State of Salesforce Report.