Turn Social Relationships into Customers For Life

Customer For Life

Tag Archives: Chatter

Salesforce.com, Consumerization, Social Media and Open Source Strategy

Posted on by Posted in Salesforce, Social Media
Salesforce.com is clearly more than a CRM company. As Paul Greenberg on ZDNet points out in his recent article, salesforce understands that workplace and personal time are not too different. What matters are the user experience and building larger communities of business users and application developers. This speaks to initiatives such as Chatter for collaboration and the recent acquisition of Heroku the open source Ruby on Rails company.
Positioning salesforce as more than a CRM company is obviously good for product differentiation.  Focusing on the “Consumerization” of the workplace will help adoption by making it a seamless experience from social life. Heroku the open source company was purchased for $212 million opening the gates to a vast community of developers that will help salesforce say with even greater confidence “there’s an app for that”.
Read the full Article Here:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/crm/salesforcecom-dreams-big-and-forcefully-part-i/2294?tag=content;search-results-rivers

Why Cloud Computing

Posted on by Posted in Cloud Computing

It is amazing that some folks still question the validity of cloud based computing. This doubt was somewhat understandable 10 years ago. Clearly, software as a service (SaaS), Cloud Computing is here to stay. If you still have doubts consider these facts:

  • According to IBM global revenue from cloud computing will jump to $126 billion in 2012 from $47 billion in 2008
  • Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, recently said his company is “all in” when talking about Cloud computing
  • IBM last week purchased Cast Iron, a powerful Cloud data integration provider. According to IBM: “The acquisition expands IBM’s industry-leading business process and integration software portfolio, which grew more than 20 percent in the first quarter of 2010.” This may not seem like a big deal but s/ he who controls data connectivity wins.

The Cloud delivers agility and on demand productivity. Sales always needed and continues to need up to the moment relevant information to close more deals. Opportunities happen in real-time. Responses to emerging opportunities must be swift and comprehensive in scope. Information must be accessible in the now.

Social media, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are Cloud platforms for which business benefits have not been fully realized yet. With the advent of connectors such as Salesforce.com Chatter, this may also change. Tell us what you think.