The Cloud Must Go On. Watch the Banned Benioff Keynote Live.
The best thing that may have happened to Salesforce.com at Oracle Open World is getting CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote cancelled. Oracle and Larry Ellison are now officially the Bad Guys (opinions are split on whether Larry is the Emperor, Darth Vader or God), @Benioff is the oppressed Folk Hero, Salesforce.com got thei $1M keynote [...]
Larry and Marc Round 2 or Is It Round 3? #OOW11
Ahh, what a difference a good night’s sleep makes. The Greeks are still threatening default on their bonds, the economy is still in the loo, the major stock indices are teetering on a bear market precipice and Marc Benioff is still going to speak at Oracle OpenWorld or at least next door. But there is [...]
Converging on the Social Enterprise
I was in San Francisco last week for Dreamforce, the yearly confab for Salesforce that has had a major focus on social business the last couple of years. There’s little doubt that Marc Benioff clearly sees the very near future of business, and it’s something he calls the social enterprise. While you can read my [...]
Enterprise Headlines and Excerpts, 1-15 April 2011
Tax day. Meh. Some highlights of the first half of April: Marin County tries using racketeering charges against Deloitte and SAP. Do Marin County residents realize their paid employees are wasting their money this way? And after wasting so much money with an ill-advised ERP project?!? Larry Page takes over CEO role at Google, shakes [...]
Zuora and Salesforce in Pact
Zuora and Salesforce.com announced today a new offering that highlights the strengths of each company and delivers new functionality to the telecommunications industry. Zuora for the Communications Industry is a solution based on the Force.com platform that handles billing, payments and customer care for telco and related industries’ customers. This makes a lot of sense [...]
Marc Benioff: the consumer tech salesperson to the enterprise
Commenting on the acquisition of Radian6, Dennis Howlett says “Salesforce is becoming a company that I don’t understand”. To be honest, many enterprise observers, yours truly included, have been confounded by the company many a time. When Marc Benioff started the company over a decade ago, he could (should?) have followed the path he learned [...]
A vendetta to get you up in the morning
I always like to say that a little vendetta is healthy for a startup. A vendetta, or keeping frenemies as Mark Suster wrote, can be a positive way to differentiate yourself if you understand the bigger picture. It is risky as part of of a company culture, but when you believe in something enough you [...]
Social, Analytics and Mobility Will Drive CRM Rewrite
“Call rewrite!” That’s what they said in the olden days on movie sets when the script needed doctoring. It’s also what the technology industry metaphorically does about every ten years. We rewrite much of what we’ve been relying on for information processing because the accumulation of new technologies over the previous decade has made our [...]
Salesforce Thinks Big – And Forcefully Part II
Yesterday, I covered the lessons of Dreamforce 2010 from what it revealed about salesforce.com’s going forward strategies, products, vision and other sundries. Concluded that there was some very good stuff. Today we head into the messaging and final thoughts and other resources you might want to read. The Messaging….Not As Clear This was mixed. Even [...]
The new age of sexy enterprise software – Part 1: Salesforce.com gets mojo
This past week, three events took place that will unexpectedly transform the boring world of enterprise software into an exciting, competitive, and fun place. Part 1 tells starts the story.
