The endless open-source march

July 8, 2008

I can’t really say I’d ever throw my hat into the open-source arena of fandom. There’s just something about a polished product with nigh-infinite levels of support backing it up that appeals to my sybaritic laziness in so many ways.

Still, as it is all “wave of the future” and to hopefuly scare anyone who hasn’t innovated something today into doing so, here’s a little post from a blog I’ve begun to thoroughly enjoy. He’s got some real sales enthusiasm!

Written by Michael · Filed Under SFBlogged

Scobelizer interviews Marc Benioff, covers force.com

July 7, 2008

Seems I missed this one due to my vacation

Click here to view a interesting video interview with Salesforce.com’s CEO.

Written by Adam Killam · Filed Under SFBlogged

New white paper: 7 domains of a successful CRM roll-out

July 3, 2008

A new post on Successforce.com sprouted up yesterday detailing key lessons Salesforce.com’s professional services team has learned after 4,000 successful CRM implementations. While the paper focuses on enterprise roll-outs, small to medium sized companies can benefit from the ideas presented as well.

One of the most important take aways for smaller companies: before engaging in a CRM implementation, document your current business processes and decide what to keep and what’s not working before you begin your roll-out. It’s a critical step on your way to successfully making the switch from your current method of operating to adapting Salesforce.

See the full article and 6 page white paper, here.

Written by Adam Killam · Filed Under SFBlogged

Salesforce Ouroboros

July 2, 2008

Here’s a little example of quick team adaptation hinging entirely on Salesforce CRM.

Apparently this blogger was visiting a small software company geared towards making business better (my favourite kind) for a meeting regarding this company’s adoption of Salesforce. The twist is, the VP headlining the meeting explains that one of the primary reasons they chose Salesforce was the inventive way the SFDC sales team pitched the product to them.

… with a car accident.

Have a look.

Written by Michael · Filed Under SFBlogged

Reverend Ted, sing it again…

June 26, 2008

Reverend Ted, who posts over at his Open Source Advocacy blog has a few interesting things to say about Saas, and more imporantly, Salesforce’s position in that new market… most importantly how it appears to him and I agree, that Salesforce (more specifically the Force.com platform) is moving to position itself as the SaaS Microsoft.

Any new company entering the field of Saas will have to outmaneover them to get the edge.

Hmmm…

Have a read and tell me what you think!

Written by Michael · Filed Under SFBlogged

Can’t resist presentation slides, More PaaS predictions

June 16, 2008

Of all the Salesforce news and blog updates over the weekend, I have to say that aside from an amusing comment on Salesforce’s future as stock, “madgreek56″ over at the Enterprise Initiatives blog has put together a nice summary of the different software solutions available to you, me, and them as well as putting together the hurdles the 2.0 industry is facing.

While I know most of those of you who read this may be a bit further along the curve than this material is aimed at, it’s always nice to be armed with a few more “simple explanations” for when it comes time to justify the next sale (You could almost post this to your mum!).

It’s unfortunate you have to justify sales at all, these people should know what’s good for them, eh?

madgreek does a bit of prognosticating as well and offers a video blog that’s a bit more technical. Read his piece here.

Written by Michael · Filed Under SFBlogged

The Willys Jeep v. SaaS

June 5, 2008

This has got to go up in the SFBlogged today, the coincidence is just too great for me to ignore.

A few weeks ago I was talking with Adam Killam and I just mentioned off-hand that I’d had a chance to look over General Motor’s stock info recently (NYSE:GM) and that it bore a striking resemblance to Salesforce.com’s (NYSE:CRM). It struck me as kind of a peculiar thing about the markets that a “software” company founded in 1999 could be comparable in any way to a vehicle manufacturer who produced a light truck that Eisenhower himself admitted was an essential part of fighting and winning World War 2.

I guess the silent parallel this guy is drawing here is; the Willys Jeep underwent hundreds upon hundreds of modifications at the hands of every army that got ahold of one. Every allied nation had Willys in their armed forces, and whether it was skiis or rocket launchers every one of these things were custom tooled to do the exactly job that needed to get done. Sound like anything familiar?

Part one of “mwilson”’s post is here.

Written by Michael · Filed Under SFBlogged

Opinion from Dreamforce Europe: Link

May 29, 2008

So it’s a bit of a slow news day though thankfully even when there’s not much corporate or app news out for Salesforce there’s always someone somewhere blogging about something interesting enough to warrant your attention!

I’d like to point you over to Tim Anderson. He’s one of the throng of Web 2.0 people recently returned from Dreamforce Europe and he has an opinion or two about the future of the cloud and Salesforce.com. Raises some interesting questions and it makes me wonder what SF has in store to deal with them.

Enjoy.

Written by Michael · Filed Under SFBlogged

Salesforce.com Summer 2008 release notes reviewed

May 11, 2008

Steve Anderson of Gokubi blog fame, recently posted a good commentary on the Summer 2008 version release notes. Check it out here.

Not much more to add to that one

Written by Adam Killam · Filed Under SFBlogged

Microsoft vs Salesforce.com: config tool shootout

April 17, 2008

Paul Greenberg who writes the PGreenblog, has put together a panel of judges to rule on a challenge he’s put forth to both Microsoft and Salesforce.com. (Yes I was a bit late in reporting this one!)

From the PRGreenblog:

“So I decided to issue a challenge to both Microsoft and salesforce.com. The idea is to for each company to take on an identical configuration task (or tasks) and then do them. A panel of independent judges would, using specific criteria and a scoring system, then judge the results and declare the winner - or a tie, which could be possible and we’d publish (to a point) the results of the contest online so that you’d have the comparison made.”

“I’m glad to say that both Microsoft and salesforce.com have accepted the challenge. The Configuration Shootout is a go (a better name would be appreciated). The judges are being recruited, the initial criteria (subject to approval by the participants) are being draw up and we should have something going pretty soon.”

Congrats to Paul for getting the two companies to go head to head. We’re looking forward to hearing about Salesforce.com’s win…er…I mean we’re looking forward to the results!

Written by Adam Killam · Filed Under SFBlogged