Appirio – It’s nice to have a rich date.
July 29, 2008
Just over a week ago Appirio picked up about $5-million and change in financing from Sequoia Capital and that’s not pennies! Appirio is one of the cloud’s darling wunderkinds of integration and not that long ago (earlier this year) picked up a million and some financing straight from Salesforce.com and friends.
I was a little surprised to see Appirio walk away with a fistful of cash that size, considering they seem to have just exploded onto the scene over the last few months, and IT blogger Jeff Kaplan seems to have noticed as well. His perspective is especially unique in this situation as he was a part of a Sequoia funded company that tailed Cisco around over a decade ago providing services eerily similar to what Appirio does for the cloud today.
Have a read and keep an eye on Appirio.
Saas, a slow burn beats a brilliant flash
July 29, 2008
More names, big, mid, and small are throwing their voices behind the Saas Juggernaut and John Murphy of A&O Systems + Services has one of my favourite predictions so far. How would you like an industry leader in IT support saying that in the next four years 80% of organizations world-wide will use some kind of cloud computing?
Not enough for you? How about a prediction for 30% of them to run entirely on cloud infrastructure? Mr. Murphy adds his voice here at SiliconRepublic.com.
As an aside, Salesforce Times runs partially in the cloud, so we’re helping to push that global average up!
How Sun uses Salesforce.com
July 28, 2008
Spotted this article on the Bienalto blog that discusses (via an interview with Sun’s Paul O’Connor) how Sun is using Salesforce.com and web marketing to grow their business.
A good article for all you marketing fanatics out there. (Perhaps this new web based focus can help Sun get back on track?….)
A warm feeling: One man switches to SFDC
July 24, 2008
This is a tiny post on a personal blog by a real estate agent who just swapped to Salesforce.
I don’t know about you, but I just find something so profoundly positive about reading little things like this. This is the best kind of advertising, the most honest kind of advertising, this is one guy in North Carolina who decided to save himself a bit of cash and make his small business easier to manage and more efficient. He liked it so much in fact he thought he’d put that feeling in a little glass bottle (bloggttle?) and cast it into the internet for anyone to find.
I like the last sentence in his first bullet point, we should all use that one. Very very good.
Anyway, for a bit of a smile, click here.
Thrivent choses Salesforce
July 23, 2008
Look ma, a blue moon!
Sarcasm aside, when a big financial house choses to do anything leading edge (and it involves YOU!) that’s a big page to add to your success story. Convincing the old money giants to shape up and get with the times is nearly Sisyphean in difficulty, yet someone out there convinced Thrivent Financial (twelve time Fortune 500 company) that Salesforce for Wealth Management was the way to go.
I say good on them it’s looking like SaaS can take on anything and handle any challenge so even the biggest companies can benefit from a Salesforce angel on their shoulder. Best part is; when Thrivent raves about it the other giants may lumber over and lend an ear.
David Sims at TMCnet wrote the article that got my eye.
The Saas Paradox
July 22, 2008
Dare Obasanjo has an interesting post on the agony of big business trying to “stoop” to the crafty, agile level of the Cloud idealist. I have to say I really enjoyed reading what he had to say as he brings up some very valid points and speaks positively of the companies like Salesforce.com who started from scratch and made it on their own.
I think the most important thing I took away from this is that SaaS is not something you can just staple on to your software company and “get profit from web 2.0″, it’s something you have to work towards constantly and be focused on. It’s a totally unique business style.
He blogs at 25hoursaday and his post is here.
Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
July 21, 2008
Linda Brewton starts her piece over at The Motley Fool with that line as she takes a short jab at Microsoft’s new strategy for delivering it’s online business kit.
The strategy? It’s basically the rest of the SaaS industry’s strategy with the MS logo airbrushed over it and a higher price tag.
Have a read here and see if it gives you the same little smirk it gave me.
Heroes: Entire business run with Salesforce
July 18, 2008
This is the kind of story I’ve been waiting for and it’s got my curiosity glowing white hot for info on how life in the cloud is treating Minnesota based IDeaS Revenue Optimization. Why? Well if you hadn’t guessed from the title IDeaS has opted to run it’s entire company with the Salesforce platform, and a lot of help from AppExchange partners of course.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this company doing exactly what every Salesforce professional dreams of? This is a company taking the edge and adopting the new way of doing things, this is the dream and they’re living it.
If anyone knows anyone who even knew a guy who was friends with a cousin of a person who worked on the IDeaS project, let us at SF Times know!
For the only genuinely interesting press release I’ve ever read, click here and for the company itself click there.
Slashed by a factor of ten: Apatar’s new release
July 15, 2008
Apatar Inc., is an industry leader in data integration and data fluidity (made that up) who announced the release of their Apatar On-Demand application to the Salesforce appexchange. Promising a smoother flow of information between Salesforce Accounts and Quickbooks as well as providing a few other perks like a data quality service. Apatar’s press release proudly proclaims that all this will decrease deployment time “by a factor of ten”.
That’s… most impressive.
The press release at Apatar is here and if anyone gets a chance to use this app please let me know how it works out for you!
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this” – SF Certification?
July 14, 2008
According to Chris Talbot of eChannelLine, Salesforce.com has just started pushing it’s new Force.com certification scheme. While my attempts to locate information on whether or not this has actually just started today proved fruitless, reading this now does raise the question whether you, the Salesforce professional today, need another expenditure added to your CV’s to prove that you know what you are talking about?
How long until companies won’t hire the devs who haven’t shelled out the 4,000 USD for the Developer training?
Either way, I’d take the Salesforce Admin training in a heartbeat if I had the spare dosh. There’s no doubt that some classroom training can help admins, devs, and even end-users to get the most out of their SF accounts so it’s definitely a positive.
The story is here, and the SF.com training info is here (devs) and here (admins).
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