One of the Biggest Mistakes Enterprise Startups Make
The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. “We want low-touch or zero-touch businesses” was the mantra. I believe it’s flawed. While I have some sympathy with [...]
Acquisition News – Cloud Sherpas Broadens the Franchise and Moves Into ITSM
I’ve been covering Cloud Sherpas since its inception – I’m particularly interested in this new breed of services brokerage that is proving successful despite deriving its revenue from a small sliver of a very small annual charge – this in comparison to the traditional on-premise world where companies enjoyed massive consulting fees for implementation project [...]
What Will Identity Look Like in the Future?
At the defrag conference recently, I took part in a few sessions that looks at the broader role of identity in a world were more and more people use cloud-based tools. One of the sessions was led by Pat Patterson, Principal Developer Evangelist at Salesforce. In his session, Patterson drew a picture of the history [...]
Reflections on BoxWorks
Having had a little while to reflect on a month that saw me attend both DreamForce and BoxWorks, I wanted to get down some thoughts on what is happening with Box, one of Silicon Valley’s current darlings. This is all the more relevant given the slightly uncomfortable position that Box found itself in after DreamWorks [...]
Workday Launches Version 18 – Quick Analysis
At the Workday Rising event being held in Las Vegas this week, Workday announced the latest version of its product, on top of which they held an analyst/influcner day that I was following remotely. I’ve got a few thoughts about the analyst day but first a recap of the news.
Box Counters the Threat of ChatterBox–The Switzerland of Content Collaboration
When Salesforce announced their ChatterBox content collaboration solutions a couple of weeks ago, the one vendor most impacted by the news was Box – partly because they’d previously been an important partner of Salesforce, but also because the announcement cut off some of Box’s oxygen, especially inside companies who are
Pre BoxWorks Thoughts: Box To Play Best Of Breed Game?
I am on the plane to attend BoxWorks 2012, the annual user conference of Box. Before hearing anything from Box, I am trying to make sense of Box’s strategy based on what I heard in the past 3 weeks during Salesforce and Tibco events. It will be interesting to hear from Box in the next [...]
If Developers are the new Kingmakers–Salesforce is Starting to Own the Castle
I’ve been attending Salesforce’s user conference now for a few years and one thing that’s always been a little awkward is the fact that Salesforce has always tried to make the event meaningful for developers but has generally created a kind of Frankenstein beast where suited business types get highbrow in the main conference whilst [...]
MindTouch Delivers Knowledge Base for Salesforce Customers
MindTouch is one of the early leaders in the Enterprise 2.0 space –their CEO, Aaron Fulkerson was a regular attendee on the conference circuit. Over the last couple of years however, MindTouch has gone pretty silent as market conditions and heightened competition caused them to disappear from view. I bumped into Fulkerson in San Diego [...]
The Magic at DreamForce 2012
Dreamforce is an impressive conference, though I have never actually attended one. At least not in person, I always make it a point to watch the posted videos as the show has some truly impressive content. This year there was decidedly less video posted, I think the CMOs that get featured are increasingly restricting their [...]
Dreamforce 2012: Betting On Social Enterprise
Dreamforce 2012 was held last week at San Francisco with large number of attendees from all over the world. If the conference numbers are any indication of market performance, Salesforce is giving a tough fight to Oracle but they rarely indicate anything significant other than showing enthusiasm among their users. With master showman Marc Benioff [...]
Salesforce Becomes the First Next Generation Enterprise Platform
Strong words but, as I predicted, the announcements at this years DreamForce point to Salesforce firmly creating for itself the position of first true IT platform of the cloud era – that’s a lofty statement but a justified one I believe. From the release, here are the announcements:
Box Counters Salesforce Smackdown
At TechCrunch Disrupt last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff leaked his own company’s news of a new content collaboration and sharing service dubbed ChatterBox. I’ve actually known about the product for a month or so, my sources who told me of its initial existence said that it was a direct
Dataloader.io Provides Easy Salesforce Migration
One of the great untold barriers to actually moving to the cloud is the not insignificant pain that organizations feel when migrating their data from an existing system of record to a cloud solution. This is especially the case when the solution is both an integral part of the organization’s
Adam & Krishan Got Me Motivated Today… to toss the trash conversations
I was speaking with Krishan Subramanian (@krishnan) and Adam Seligman (@adamse) today. I love talking to these guys. They’re both smart, intelligent and upbeat guys. They see the positive things we’re all working toward and accomplishing in the technology space, specifically around PaaS, Cloud Computing and around the cultural implications of stronger technology communities, involvement …
