SalesForce Archive

This evening during the Super Bowl, enterprise software provider Salesforce launched their first ads for Chatter, their Twitter-like instant messaging and private group chat function. The commercials featured an animated Black Eye Peas (hot off their pretty crappy halftime show) singer Will.i.am showing off how well he can communicate with his band mates using Chatter. Much like Leena Rao, I doubt the Black Eye Peas are customers of Chatter but maybe they are!

I was actually excited to see the Chatter commercials – but they weren’t what I was expecting. Show me a work team that is able to get more work done faster so they can have their weekends off to spend with their kids – that would have been emotion (like the Chrysler ad). Show me a manager who uses Chatter and has more free time to coach his or her team.

The Howard Development blog noticed that if you search on Google for the keyword Chatter, the ads that appear are, first a Salesforce ad and second, an ad for Chatter competitor Yammer.

You can see images from some of the ads below – here’s the text from the Yammer Chatter ads:

• No More Gimmicks – Choose real collaboration and build something special with your team.
• Better Than Chatter – Strengthen your collaboration with Yammer.
• Yammer Tops Chatter – See why Yammer is best for social networking w/ coworkers.
• Your Work Isn’t Trivial – Chatter: to talk rapidly or incessantly about trivial matter.

I made the mistake of trying to get into the Salesforce Dreamforce Expo at opening time. Apparently this is the worst time – right after the Marc Benioff keynote. The crowd was massive – you would think everyone pushing was hoping to get the latest Cabbage Patch Kid for an holiday gift! They also provide free lunch so that too increased the foot traffic.

Oddly I didn’t see any mention of Twitter or Facebook outside of a small booth in the Salesforce employee area.

This conference takes me back to my marketing days – all business and/or business casual dress. A massive sales and marketing crowd! And it seems about 50/50 women and men. Here are some photos from the Expo Hall:

The theme is “collaborate”

Continue reading “Salesforce Dreamforce Expo Photos” »

After a short delay in transit, I’ve arrived in San Francisco for the Salesforce Dreamforce conference. As I noted last week, I am here to meet potential partners and current customers of CloudContacts. I will also be working on event coverage so stay tuned!

Salesforce says 20,000 people will attend the conference this week and from the look of the crowd inside the Moscone Center – the 20,000 have already arrived!

As I walked from building to building to figure out where to get my pass (everyone sent me in the wrong direction), I noticed a number of Segway vehicles around the Moscone Center. The Segways are all promoting Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The promotion reads, “I didn’t get Forced! I got a cloud-based CRM solution that works the way I do.”

I am not sure if the people on the Segways were just supposed to drive the vehicles or if they are supposed to engage people on the street but I didn’t see any engagement. Some of the people walking down the street (which was very crowded) said that the vehicles were just in the way.

The sides of the moving billboard feature a Microsoft Tag which you can snap with your mobile to get news on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

This morning we included a link in our startup updates to a post on the VerticalResponse blog. The company provides email marketing services for businesses. VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick noted, “I’m all about getting new business, but we’ve tried to steer clear of going after our competitor’s customers because we think there are enough businesses out there that need  email marketing services.” I agree with Janine and that’s why you rarely see a post on CN that says x is dead because of y.

Janine’s post notes that one of the company’s competitors, iContact, ran an ad in the conference hall during the Dreamforce conference. Just one small issue with the ad…iContact spelled their competitor’s name wrong! If you are going to create ads that hit hard (maybe even considered attack ads) against your competition, you better make sure that the ads are perfectly executed. Otherwise you will end up with pie on your face like iContact has.

Staffing solutions provider Jobscience has announced the launch of Jobscience for Google Apps today. The new service combines Google Apps and a custom recruiting application built on the Salesforce Force.com platform. What a change from the old days of trying to integrate Resumix with a job web site.

Interestingly they push you to use Blogger for the company job blog. They quickly note that the job blog offers RSS so you can share the jobs anywhere. The company describes the service as, “…allows small to medium size companies to publicly broadcast jobs, accept online applications, and utilize Google Docs to manage resumes and other recruitment-related documents.”

A site license is $100/month and works with any level of Salesforce account. The company created a demo video which is a walkthrough of the steps to get the application running.

Google and Salesforce are announcing the launch of "Salesforce for Google Apps" today at no cost to Salesforce customers. Adam Ostrow at Mashable was part of a demo last week and has details on the deal. Adam notes that the following Google Apps are now integrated into Salesforce: Gmail, Google Talk, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. Salesforce also integrates Microsoft apps into the Salesforce platform.

Salesforce has a platform which allows developers to build upon called AppExchange and with the deal launching today with Google, you can now build apps that leverage both regular Salesforce and Salesforce for Google Apps.

Will this make Google Apps sexier to the enterprise market that Salesforce serves? Ostrow says yes. I suggest maybe but in the long term (4-7 years). Switching isn’t as easy as it looks. I do agree with Ostrow that this is a win for Web apps. I believe this marriage with Google and Salesforce is a large win for the small to medium business, not the large enterprise customer.

Today I had the chance to speak with Bruce Francis, VP Corporate Strategy of SalesForce and Force.com Platform. He briefed me on some updates within the Force.com platform that I’d like to share. I will admit that cloud computing isn’t my strongest suit but I took good notes and did a bit of research as well :)

Force.com is a platform and Bruce describes it as a "platform as a service". The way I think of cloud computing is basically not storing it "locally" but up there in the clouds for better performance. He explained that using the cloud changes things for the developer in three main areas: access to unlimited power, delivered as a utility service and infrastructure for any idea. The parts of the platform include: Force.com Development-as-a-Service includes new Force.com IDE, Force.com Metadata API, Force.com Code Share, and Force.com Sandbox.

They shared that Salesforce.com customers have already created more than 50,000 custom applications with the Force.com Platform, such as Accounts Receivable, Bug Enhancement Tracking, Employee Compliance and Training, Emergency Room Staffing, Expense Reporting, Food Ingredient Management, Recruiting, Time Management, and many others.

One of the big changes revolves around pricing for using the cloud. The new pay-per-login utility pricing model adds on a $5/login up to 5 logins a month plan. The old plan of $50/month/user unlimited logins will remain available as well. They are running a promotion throughout 2008 where the $5 plan will be 99 cents a month. I honestly don’t understand why they didn’t just say it’s 99 cents considering we aren’t even through January 2008 yet. They have priced the plan for mass adoption.

I asked about a comparison to Amazon’s computing services and Bruce said that Amazon handles the secure database well but they don’t handle integration, interface and app exchange like Force.com does and that Force.com focuses on the enterprise.

They are also announcing a $1 million dollar developer challenge as part of their "Tour De Force" visiting 20 cities as a global developer roadshow. They will announce the winner at the end of the tour. Apparently the $1 million is an investment so I am not sure how that affects the ability to use the money freely or if you are giving up equity should you win. The submitted apps must be built 100% natively on their platform.