SaaS vendors

Salesforce.com as ‘The Pusherman’

Today Salesforce.com is releasing a free edition of Force.com, its SaaS-based platform.

I was talking about it with Jo Maitland, executive editor of our new Cloud Computing site, who blogged about the SaaS platform release over on The Troposphere. She makes a good point. It’s an age-old trick. Offer up the first taste for free to get people hooked and then charge them for the rest.

Just like the pusherman we were warned about in elementary school. Continued »

SAP adds to the SaaS multi-tenancy debate

SAP’s John Wookey broke his silence this week on the company’s latest SaaS plans.

As he told SearchSAP.com, SAP will release SaaS-based business applications to augment customers’ existing Business One deployments. Additionally, the new SaaS apps (no word on when they’ll be released) will be multi-tenant, abandoning SAP’s earlier commitment to “isolated tenancy.”

The multi tenancy and SaaS debate has been ongoing for years, lead primarily by Salesforce.com, which contends that a SaaS application that is not multi-tenant is not truly SaaS. Continued »

Salesforce.com gives away free mobile app

In London for its annual Cloudforce event, Salesforce.com was in a giving mood today.

Salesforce is offering a scaled-down version of its mobile application free to its customers. While customers running the Unlimited product already receive the full Salesforce Mobile application, now customers of Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition can download Mobile Lite.

Users can log calls and emails, update activities and tasks and view dashboards that are configured for viewing on mobile devices. The application is available on RIM’s Blackberry, Apple’s iPhone and Windows Mobile devices.

Two things struck me from this announcement: how far mobile CRM has come and how Apple’s AppStore Continued »

Anthony Lye on Oracle on Demand, Social CRM

The CRM landscape changed forever with the arrival of Software as a Service (SaaS). Oracle, despite its legacy as an on-premise CRM vendor, and its two major CRM acquisitions in PeopleSoft and Siebel, has not stood idly by however.

We sat down with Anthony Lye, senior vice president of CRM at Oracle, to discuss the company’s latest SaaS version with CRM On Demand Release 16 and its strategy around providing social networking-like collaboration tools as separate CRM applications.

Lye also discusses some of the key areas where he sees a difference between Oracle’s products and Salesforce.com’s.

In this 20-minute podcast, listeners will learn about:

• Oracle’s latest SaaS CRM releases.

• An explanation of the multiple deployment options Oracle provides and what customers are asking for now.

• How customers are deploying both SaaS and premise-based CRM systems.

• The strategy behind offering Social CRM as separate, standalone modules.

• How Oracle is using social networking internally.

 

 Anthony Lye on CRM on demand, social CRM [19:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

RightNow’s Greg Gianforte on SaaS CRM

This isn’t the first downturn Greg Gianforte has seen. Gianforte, who founded RightNow Technologies in 1997, emerged from the last bust with a public company and in this podcast shares some of his thoughts on the current economy, what it means for RightNow and its customers.

Bozeman, Mont.-based RightNow, which offers Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM and has its roots in eService software, may be better positioned for a downturn than other software companies.

Gianforte has also been on the road visiting customers since January and shares what they’ve been telling him and how their priorities have changed in recent months.

In this 16-minute podcast listeners will hear:

• The motivation for Gianforte’s visits and how he’s found the time to conduct them

• What he’s learned from RightNow customers

• What prospective customers are interested in during the downturn

• Details on RightNow’s latest release

• What unified communications means for the contact center

 

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For more on SaaS CRM and contact center software:

See a demo of RightNow software

Learn why organizations are paying greater attention to their SaaS CRM SLAs

Loomis switches from Salesforce.com to Oracle CRM On Demand

Transforming an organization’s customer service operations is never an easy task, particularly for one as old as Loomis AB, which got its start picking up and guarding money from banks via stagecoach. Yet, as the Houston-based vendor told us, it can be done.

Wayne Sadin, CIO of Loomis, joined the company to help make the transition, which included swapping out Salesforce.com for Oracle CRM On Demand, adding Oracle’s Contact Center Anywhere and tying it all back into the Oracle E-Business Suite.

In this 20-minute podcast, appropriate for both business and IT professionals, Sadin explains:

• How he overcame his skepticism about software as a service

• How Loomis makes accountability to customers a priority throughout the organization

• Loomis’s method of distributing customer information through its Oracle system

• More about the organization’s data governance model

• The migration path from Salesforce.com to Oracle CRM On Demand

• What Sadin would have done differently

 

 Standard Podcast [24:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SAP talks SAP CRM

After SAP introduced its revamped CRM system, SAP CRM 2007 at its annual Influencer Event in Boston, executives say SAP is now “a CRM company.” Michael de la Cruz, senior vice president for SAP CRM solutions, and Bob Stutz, president and general manager CRM global strategy product development discuss the new interface, usability and SAP’s development plans.

 

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Zach Nelson on CRM and ERP integration

In this installment of the Voices of CRM podcast series, Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., talks about NetSuite’s beginnings, the CRM market and the importance of integration between ERP, CRM and e-commerce systems. Nelson also discusses how NetSuite’s CRM approach differs from  Salesforce.com, RightNow, SAP and Siebel.

Nelson has served as NetSuite’s CEO since 2002, previously holding posts at Network Associates, myCIO and Oracle.

 

 Standard Podcast [15:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download