Amazon.com just launched SimpleDB. I find this news intriguing because it addresses the same fundamental problem as Salesforce.com, but takes a bottom-up approach ("here's a platform.... let's evolve some apps") in contrast to Salesforce's top-down approach ("here's a CRM app.... let's evolve a platform").

The metabase component is very conducive to CRM in that you have the flexibility to wake up some morning and say "Let's capture Contact's drivers license numbers in our database going forward", and easily add a custom field without having to worry about impacting or redesigning the application.

Knowing Amazon's capital position, datacenter hosting expertise, and high reliability service levels, I would go out on a limb and say SimpleDB in conjunction with their S3 storage service (and a perhaps a future unnamed application development tool?) is positioned to be a killer platform player in the years to come.