One distinctive feature of Salesforce.com from other application vendors (on-premise and SaaS) has been it has smartly encouraged for years now a group of smaller, cloud savvy systems integrators – as different from large outsourcers, Indian firms or resellers. That includes Appirio (in which Salesforce has a minority investment), Astadia, Bluewolf, Model Metrics and others.
So, I wondered if its announced acquisition of Model Metrics was a change in strategy. I asked Narinder Singh, co-founder at Appirio, and as he has blogged “Since early this year, Salesforce has aligned their entire company and all of their considerable marketing might around the social enterprise…..By adding Model’s mobile development and UI capabilities to their team, Salesforce will be able to make the social enterprise vision tangible for customers.”
In other words it extends Salesforce’s push on Chatter and acquisitions like Radian6.
Narinder adds “We are somewhat relieved to know they will be focused on driving the social enterprise and mobility for Salesforce (and therefore with us), instead of being our most worthy competitor.”
While wishing both the Appirio and the Model Metrics teams well, I hope Salesforce customers continue to have plenty of choice and implementation costs stay close to the ground and not reach for the clouds.
