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?

Salesforce.com told 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.

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.

It’s also remarkably similar to the way Salesforce.com built its presence in the CRM marketplace. Benioff and company built an easy-to-use tool with low up-front costs that the vice president of sales could buy with his own budget, bypassing IT. Once it was in, the sales force loved it, the data was in the system and there was no breaking the addiction.

The press release seemingly makes no secret of Salesforce.com’s ambitions, quoting Nucleus Research’s Rebecca Wetteman:

“Customers have told us they get hooked on Force.com after building their first app.”

Will Salesforce.com have the same sort of results with developers?

The free offering is fairly limited: one custom application, one web site with up to 250,000 page views per month, the ability to build 10 custom objects (or database tables) per user and a sandbox development environment to test the application or site before deploying it. All for up to 100 users. It’s only available in the United States.

Beyond that businesses need to pay for the Force.com edition which begins at $25 per user per month.

A great deal for small businesses with some development skills that want to get a site up and running. We’ll see if Salesforce.com can get enterprises hooked.

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.

Count Denis Pombriant among those questioning traditional premise-based software vendors suddenly offering on-demand options. He wrote in a recent blog (before the SAP announcement):

I’m thinking that the usual has happened.  After years of warning signs that the conventional software business model was increasingly misaligned for the future, SaaS solutions have become a threat to conventional vendors.  During those years of warnings, many conventional software vendors chose to do nothing to upgrade their offerings and businesses to the SaaS business model – including rewriting their code.  These vendors are now attempting to throw a Hail Mary pass.

Yet it’s an argument Joshua Greenbaum has little patience for. He wrote of the multitenancy debate back in April:

My curmudgeonly comment is this: Neither methodology will matter in a few short years, because the SaaS market is set to evolve beyond delivering a “faster-better-cheaper” version of on-premise enterprise software into delivering significant value above and beyond anything that on-premise can deliver today. And once that evolution truly sets in (and the market’s DNA is recombining constantly in the service of this ideal) these tenancy debates – which are basically about the cost-structure of competing with on-premise solutions – will cede their primacy to debates about the premiums that SaaS 2.0 solution providers will be able to charge their customers. At which point the basic cost issues that are fueling the great Debate 1.0 will be off the table.

Greenbaum makes an interesting point, that the next generation of SaaS applications will win not on price or ease of installation but on features and functions because they can aggregate data, processes and people in the cloud in a way that premise-based applications cannot.

However, at first blush, these new SAP applications do not sound like that next generation. As Vinnie Mirchandani wrote:

This sounds like a “moat” strategy – protect the core, on-premise product with a series of surrounding “best of breed” SaaS

Reconcile it against the integrated, wall-to-wall is better than best-of-breed argument SAP has been using for decades. Reconcile this with their BusinessByDesign – which is a fairly broad SaaS ERP/CRM solution set - and promises we heard at Sapphire just 4 weeks ago about that “bear coming out in the summer”

Meanwhile, we hear even less about SAP’s commitment to SaaS-based CRM than we do about its overall CRM message. That’s apparently good news for companies like NetSuite, who’s CEO Zach Nelson called the Wookey news his company’s “IBM moment.”

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 and RIM’s AppWorld are impacting application delivery.

Clearly, the new mobile devices have changed the game for mobile CRM. Aside from email, there’s probably no enterprise application better suited for mobile delivery, but for years, mobile CRM was plagued by vendors trying to deliver their full CRM application to mobile devices. No one wanted or needed the full application.

That’s apparently changed. Kraig Swensrud, vice president of product marketing for Salesforce.com, told me the company put the Salesforce.com Mobile application on Apple’s AppStore seven months ago and has already seen 70,000 downloads of the product. While customers often turned to partners to “mobilize” their CRM applications, it now looks like the suite vendors are getting it done themselves.

Plus, Mobile Lite is free – well, free to existing Salesforce.com customers – and everyone likes free. I certainly do. I received an iPod Touch this winter and surprised myself with how many useless applications I wound up downloading. (As fun as it may sound, the Lightsaber app has surprisingly little value). But the growing popularity of the new smart phones is requiring enterprise applications software vendors to get on board. Oracle has BI apps and CRM on the AppStore as well. SAP last summer teamed up with RIM to offer SAP CRM running natively on the Blackberry and in March teamed with Sybase to bring the SAP Business Suite to the iPhone and Blackberry.

The mobile stores also mean more mashups. Salesforce.com is using Apple’s APIs to integrate CRM with the native mapping application on the iPhone – and RIM’s APIs to integrate CRM with the phone and calendaring features on the Blackberry.

Software as a Service has already provided the opportunity for smaller, incremental enhancements and adding optional features. Maybe mobile CRM and smart phones will spur some more of that.

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.

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

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

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

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