April, 2010

Is this the end of Apex and other questions about VMforce?

Salesforce. com and VMware got together yesterday and released some details on VMforce, their much anticipated collaboration.

It left me with more questions than answers though.

In fact, Denis Pombriant over at Beagle Research may have asked the best question about VMforce.

One thing that remains cloudy (sorry) is whether a transformed Java application running on VMForce inherits the multi-tenancy that every other Salesforce cloud application has.  If not VMForce reduces Force.com to the status of a simple server.  This would be a big departure for Salesforce and something that was not alluded to in the presentation.  But it is a question that ought to be asked.

And I have a few questions of my own to ask.

First of all, now that developers can work in Java while leveraging the Force.com platform, why do they need Apex  Salesforce.com’s proprietary programming language)? Salesforce.com has always said that Apex is very “Java-like” but nothing is more Java-like than Java, no?

 SearchCloudComupting’s Carl Brooks that Force.com users will continue to use Apex if they wish and that 80% of Force.com development was basically point and click anyway, so they didn’t expect much change. Salesforce.com also said that AppExchange will continue on and Apex Force.com apps will not suddenly be available in Java on VMforce.com.

But what’s holding AppExchange partners back from moving to VMforce? As it’s been laid out, it appears developers could use VMforce for test and development and then pull it back off the cloud and in house, giving them more choice. Additionally. Salesforce.com made a big deal about the integration between VMforce and Force.com, including a “publish to Force.com” button that was well received.  Seems like one less reason to use Apex.

Of course, the big questions are around licensing and there was no word on that. None is expected for a while either but it seems to be a pretty relevant topic.

For example, will people using the VMforce applications be charged a license or is there some sort of usage-based fee? Do you get a Force.com license with a VMforce license? According to Salesforce.com, developers will get access to the Force.com platform, including the database, workflow management, Chatter social collaboration platform, search and application performance analytics.  Does that mean companies will be able to swap out Force.com licenses for VMforce licenses?

And why no word on pricing? SearchCloudComputing’s Brooks makes a good point that VMware will want to make it fairly cheap to encourage as many users as possible. Salesforce.com on the other hand is going to want to turn this into a bigger revenue stream, particularly if it cuts into Force.com usage.

Finally, I wonder, how much of this is an effort by Salesforce.com to extend its footprint beyond the core CRM users in sales, service and marketing. The AppExchange applications were supposed to do that, but most of them still seem to focus on some sort of CRM extension.

Chatter, which I had some questions about when it was released, seems to be Salesforce.com’s latest effort in that area and the fact that they are opening up Chatter to Java developers seems a clear step in that direction.

Salesforce.com buys Jigsaw – experts piece together reasons and implications

It was only yesterday that Salesforce.com announced its plans to buy Jigsaw, but already there are a number of varied takes on the reasons and the implication for the deal.

If nothing else, it does offer an answer to a question we asked earlier on the Voices of CRM, What should Salesforce.com spend $500 million on? This was only $142 million, but it’s a start.

A quick examination of some of the CRM-focused blogs found many different perspectives.

Gartner analyst Michael Maoz, in a perhaps tenuous but certainly much appreciated analogy, compares the deal to The Last Waltz and wrote in an earlier post that it’s the beginning of the end for social media vendors:

 The point is that in social networking, a business needs to move beyond silos into fitting Social processes into an overall CRM strategy. There will be many approaches. Maybe SOA and WOA techniques will make best of breed a viable approach for some businesses. Yet, however it unfolds, the goal is to insure that process consistency is achieved.

Meanwhile, Dana Gardner concludes that the acquisition means lead generation is the new advertising:

 So think of Jigsaw as bringing cloud-based ETL from all of your web interactions that feed the leads that enter into your sales and customer resource data bases and interactions. I’m proud and happy to have been successfully experimenting with the knowledge-driven content onramps to the search and social media myself for five years. It’s strong, knowledge-based content that precisely attracts and informs the users that begets their participation that begets the data that gets cleansed that nurtures more information sharing that begets the CRM process that leads to a sales cherished by both parties.

 Denis Pombriant, on the other hand warns, don’t call a customer contact a lead. His takeaway was that B2B CRM’s days of ceding attention to social networks are now over:

 Nonetheless, one of the big annoyances that many prospective buyers have is being barraged by irrelevant offers.  If the combination of Jigsaw and Salesforce can produce better targeted offers, offers that make sense to the recipients, then the combination will have done its job.

 Pombriant does, however, question the purchase price.

Jeff Kaplan, on the contrary, still considers it a wise investment. He sees the deal as Saelsforce.com’s venture into Data as a Service (DaaS).

As I see it, Salesforce.com will easily generate a far greater return from this substantial investment in the following ways:

• A CRM system is only as good as the data which it houses. Making quality contact information more easily available will increase the value of Salesforce.com’s CRM system and increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, etc.
• Jigsaw’s data-as-a-service (DaaS) gives Salesforce.com a new revenue stream and gives it access to an estimated $3 billion cloud-based data services market. This enables Salesforce.com to further diversify its product portfolio.
• Adding Jigsaw’s DaaS to its portfolio also raises the bar to Salesforce.com’s competitors who will now have to tighten their relationship with third-party data sources or make similar acquisitions.

Salesforce .com is already gearing up a new layer of marketing efforts around this acquisition centered on a new tier of services which it will brand as the “Data Cloud”

My own take is twofold. As Kaplan notes when talking about the acquisition’s potential for the company to diversify its product portfolio, what struck me is the line in Salesforce.com’s press release that “Jigsaw’s data cloud platform also creates an enormous opportunity for developers and independent software vendors to deliver entirely new applications.” It seems Salesforce.com sees opportunity in layering new applications on top of Jigsaw and bolstering the AppExchange.

It’s also looking more toward acquisitions and partnerships than in years past. Salesforce.com’s acquisition history reveals something about their future plans and their upcoming partnership/deal/announcement with VMware (a platform as a service for Java developers as our friends at SearchCloudComputing hypothesize) demonstrates willingness and even an eagerness to extend beyond CRM.

Finally, Data as a Service (DaaS), the Data Cloud, Platform as a Service (PaaS), VMforce — can we agree on a nomenclature? Do we even need it?

Richard Snow on hosted contact centers

Considering a hosted contact center? There are plenty of considerations for picking the right vendor. In this podcast, we discuss how to determine your key evaluation criteria when selecting a hosted call center provider. Hear tips on creating the proper RFP and crafting an airtight SLA, and find out who from the company to include on the vendor selection team.

In this podcast, SearchCRM.com sat down with Richard Snow, a contact center technology and strategy expert and analyst with Ventana Research, who offered insight and best practices into how to select the right hosted contact center supplier.

In this 16-minute podcast, appropriate for both business and IT professionals, Snow offers insight  into:

• The proper evaluation criteria and how businesses should tailor them to the organization
• Who should be included in the hosted call center selection team
• Where other organizations have run into problems with hosted contact centers
• Specific areas technology buyers should pay attention to with their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs)

 

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For a full transcript of the interview with Richard Snow on hosted contact centers, click below.
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