secrets behind salesforce

7/30/2019 Secrets Behind Salesforce

1/4

Secrets Behind Salesforce.coms Strategy

Share|

Mark A. Smithfor Information Management Blogs, December 23, 2010If you missed the biggest cloud computing conference, salesforce.comsDreamforce 8, (Twitter: #DF10) you missed an opportunity for insights intowhere CEO Marc Benioff is leading his company.

Like what you see? Click here to sign up for Information Management's daily newsletter to get the latest news, trends, commentary and more.

The mission of salesforce.com inc. goes way beyond the sales force automation that made

its name, asI just discussed. That should not be surprising if, as I have, you followed its

announcements and partnerships over the years. Now, I admire the efforts of salesforce,

and we are a customer, but someone needs to fully analyze the implications of its actions

or lack of them in many areas. For one, my colleague alreadyassessed its analytics and

support of dashboardsthat has room for improvement.

This task isnt easy. Salesforce does not take constructive criticism willingly and in fact is the

best at turning criticism into comedy, usually in a funny way. This was evident in the recent

advertisements Benioff used to ridicule Microsofts new cloud marketing. This one-upping in

competitive efforts is the same sort of antagonism that salesforce once used to beat up on

Siebel. Against the background of Microsoft and salesforce.com suing each other over

intellectual property, this act on stage at Dreamforce was quite amusing as Microsoft has

been working hard to tout its Microsoft Dynamics CRM and cloud computing.

It will take some serious work by Microsoft to build credibility and gain momentum against

salesforce. So far Microsoft has performed limited reach to us analysts to examine and

perhaps recommend its solutions, has limited response to requests for information and has

made it impossible to interact with its front-office applications team. Salesforce is the

complete opposite, encouraging analysts to engage with as many people as possible in an

open forum.

Foremost, salesforce is looking to gain universal acceptance of cloud computing, especially

in the public cloud arena, and announced a range of new products to enter the database

market, go deeper into the application development market and even help with the assembly

and development of applications. It is making it much simpler for power users to lay out and

assemble what we callInformation Applications. This new generation does not require

trained application developers and can help business units iterate and improve their efforts

more easily. Its a step forward for business but needs to be tempered, as many

organizations do not realize the care and support still required, let alone the issues in data

readiness, integration and migration.

This years Dreamforce took a big step toward crowning salesforce.com as the Cloud

Company. As I have stated, it is more than time to change the companys name as it is now

an enterprise software company and not just an SFA or CRM applications company.
http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=sourcemediahttp://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=sourcemediahttp://www.information-management.com/authors/32112.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/authors/32112.htmlhttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207.jsphttp://www.information-management.com/register/?user_publications%5b%5d=85&avail_publications%5b%5d=85&s=EIDNL0Chttp://www.information-management.com/register/?user_publications%5b%5d=85&avail_publications%5b%5d=85&s=EIDNL0Chttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_business_intelligence_cloud_computing_ROI-10019331-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_business_intelligence_cloud_computing_ROI-10019331-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_business_intelligence_cloud_computing_ROI-10019331-1.htmlhttp://davidmenninger.ventanaresearch.com/2010/12/15/salesforce-analytics-indentify-a-break-in-the-clouds/http://davidmenninger.ventanaresearch.com/2010/12/15/salesforce-analytics-indentify-a-break-in-the-clouds/http://davidmenninger.ventanaresearch.com/2010/12/15/salesforce-analytics-indentify-a-break-in-the-clouds/http://davidmenninger.ventanaresearch.com/2010/12/15/salesforce-analytics-indentify-a-break-in-the-clouds/http://www.ventanaresearch.com/research/category_new.aspx?id=3844http://www.ventanaresearch.com/research/category_new.aspx?id=3844http://www.ventanaresearch.com/research/category_new.aspx?id=3844http://www.ventanaresearch.com/research/category_new.aspx?id=3844http://davidmenninger.ventanaresearch.com/2010/12/15/salesforce-analytics-indentify-a-break-in-the-clouds/http://davidmenninger.ventanaresearch.com/2010/12/15/salesforce-analytics-indentify-a-break-in-the-clouds/http://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_business_intelligence_cloud_computing_ROI-10019331-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/register/?user_publications%5b%5d=85&avail_publications%5b%5d=85&s=EIDNL0Chttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207.jsphttp://www.information-management.com/authors/32112.htmlhttp://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=sourcemedia


2/4

Salesforce has had and continues to expand a much larger agenda than many people

realize. The leadership believes their destiny is to be Microsoft or Oracle in the cloud, with

applications, tools, a platform and database technology. This is the secret mission it has

been pursuing for years. Let me unlock some other secrets that have come to light as

salesforce continues its march to global domination in cloud computing.

Collaborating for Free: Salesforce announcedChatter Freeto spur viral adoption of its

technology across the enterprise, although it charges for additional seats beyond users

licensed for the salesforce.com application. This sounds great, but the real functionality is in

Chatter Plus, which costs $15 per user, so the plan is to hook as many as possible on the

free version to build a groundswell for selling an enterprise version. This is evident in the

website information aboutChatter, which reveals that you need to purchase the upgrade for

anyone not on salesforce.com to get true business collaboration. This move is meant to gobeyond IBM, Jive, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others to gain adoption across the enterprise.

If you think about embracing Salesforce Chatter, I warn you to consider whether salesforce

will continue to innovate with this technology after it acquires a percentage of market-share

or will let it limp along like its SFA applications.

Simplifying the Database: Salesforce announceddatabase.com, which simplifies the setup,

use and pricing of databases for cloud computing. Salesforce attacks the daunting

complexity and high costs of the Microsoft and Oracle databases for general business

needs. (Oracle proposes mySQL, acquired with Sun Microsystems, as a low-cost, open

source-based technology to provide the basic database functions, but as part of Oracle it

has become less simple to use even as it chips away at the core margins of the big

database.) Salesforce is targeting a large community that needs a basic database to support

anything from using mobile applications to building cloud applications on platforms like

Amazon EC2 and others.

Salesforce is serious about taking this low end of the market, and it does deliver much of

what you need for a low price. There is a challenge in planning for storage and growth of

data, but historically salesforce has made good money from organizations that need more

storage for their applications. Marc Be

nioff has had this part of its strategy for some time and was part of the origins of salesforce

and its efforts with the CRM applications.

Dominating Website and Application Development:Salesforce announced a series

ofnew services here, including Siteforce to further its presence in building websites and

Appforce to create and deploy applications in its cloud computing environment. Realizingthat building bridges to environments other than its own is critical, salesforce announced
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/chatter/whatischatter/http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/whatischatter/http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/whatischatter/http://www.database.com/http://www.database.com/http://www.database.com/http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101209-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101209-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101209-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101209-2.jsphttp://www.database.com/http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/whatischatter/http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101207-2.jsp


3/4

VMForce, a service that provides methods for the millions of Java developers to run their

applications on Force.com. Salesforce also knows that getting more ISVs onto its platform

requires that it to provide more value-added services, from provisioning to upgrades. This is

a longer-term project in which salesforce hopes to undercut the basis of Microsoft and

Adobe in helping organizations build sites for their internal and external Internet presence.

Buying Big into Ruby: Accepting that diversity and choice are critical for its future,

salesforce is embracing the Ruby language, spending more than $200 million to acquire

Heroku and its platform, which already has over 100,000 applications and was a future

threat to Force.com as the center of gravity for application platforms in the cloud. This

expansion validates its next-generation Force.com 2 environment by incorporating the future

of Ruby-based cloud platforms. Those of you who are not aware of Ruby now probably will

be at some point, as it becomes important to the future of application assembly and scriptingfor cloud computing.

Supporting the Enterprise: As the breadth and depth of the salesforce portfolio expands

from applications to collaboration, platform and database, so will the need for managing

them. Salesforce has addressed this by working with BMC to createRemedyForce, an IT

service management solution that can meet the needs of the enterprise. It will help

organizations reduce costs of operating IT by providing applications in the cloud rather than

installed in the IT organization.

These are a few of the secrets of salesforce at the end of 2010, and making them a reality in

2011 is the companys next step. Perhaps its time for you to evaluate what your software

ecosystem will be as salesforce.com challenges IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. What

salesforce has not done is determine how these applications and platform integrate from a

data perspective which has many customers wondering if the strategy is complete. Luckily

the partners like Informatica, IBM Cast Iron, iWay Software, Jitterbit, Pervasive, SnapLogic

and even Boomi who was acquired by Dell all have an opportunity to fill the salesforce void

of dealing with all things data from a governance, integration, quality, migration and even forsynchronization.

From an applications perspective in the areas of marketing, sales and customer service, you

will not derive much immediate value from these secrets because salesforces IT agenda

looks beyond applications; those are being driven more by its partners. Also consult my

recent analyses ofOracleandSAP, both of which are investing further into CRM with

innovations that likely will outpace salesforce in 2011 and pose new competitive threats to

the core customer base that built the company.
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101208-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101208-2.jsphttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101208-2.jsphttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/BI_IT_data_management_OpenWorld-10018824-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/BI_IT_data_management_OpenWorld-10018824-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/BI_IT_data_management_OpenWorld-10018824-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_analytics_business_intelligence_data_SAP-10019305-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_analytics_business_intelligence_data_SAP-10019305-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_analytics_business_intelligence_data_SAP-10019305-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/CRM_analytics_business_intelligence_data_SAP-10019305-1.htmlhttp://www.information-management.com/blogs/BI_IT_data_management_OpenWorld-10018824-1.htmlhttp://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2010/12/101208-2.jsp


4/4

At the same time salesforce believes they can continue to strategically focus on converting

the Siebel customer base who might be a little tired in waiting for Fusion CRM for sales that

hits the market in 2011. This will result in a pretty interesting new year that will provide

salesforce new growth but also growing pains in protecting its core applications business

and customers from their own level of disenchantment in the IT and enterprise software

domination agenda.

secrets behind salesforce

Documents