Salesforce.com’s Partly Cloudy Strategy
Salesforce.com’s Partly Cloudy Strategy
Friday, January 16, 2009
Bruce Richardson
Looking back at our coverage, we couldn’t help noting the delicious irony that the vendor most closely associated with the “no-software” vow was going against its own grain by buying a software company with products that are only available the old-fashioned way: on premises. To be fair, at the time of the acquisition, salesforce.com promised to deliver a multi-tenant version of InStranet on top of its Force.com platform as a service for delivery in FY2010 (starts February 1, 2009).
A hosted, single-tenant software cloud? Cumulus, stratus, cirrus, or nimbus?
Now fast forward to January 15, 2009: At a gathering in San Francisco, salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff unveiled Service Cloud for customer service and support. A closer look under the cirrostratus marketing cover shows Service Cloud consists of the existing salesforce.com platform as well as a hosted version of the InStranet product.
Hosted software as a cloud? I don’t mean to play the part of the purist, but I have to believe Mr. Benioff would have thrown the red flag at the nearest referee had any competitor tried to position a hosted, single-tenant product as a being in the cloud. Sure, you can offer the software on a subscription fee like you would software as a service (SaaS), but you don’t get any of the advantages of multi-tenant, nor are your upgrades relatively seamless.
After the briefing, we sent an e-mail asking, if new customers start with the InStranet product, how will they move their data from InStranet to the new Force.com platform? Will this require a new implementation or re-implementation? The answer that came back was it will vary by account, based on customer-specific integrations.
That’s a logical answer for the 50 or so customers that were using InStranet before the acquisition. But what about current salesforce.com customers that need the new functionality now and are willing to start with InStranet, moving to the Force.com version once it’s available? You would have to be in a lot of pain if you’re willing to endure the two implementations in a relatively short time span. As for staying on the legacy InStranet software indefinitely, how long do you think the “no-software” leader will want to continue to support a foreign antibody?
On The Blog
On the same day salesforce.com launched Service Cloud, it also announced its Ideas platform would be used by the Change.gov website as a new community site for American citizens to share their ideas with President-Elect (or President, if you’re reading this on Tuesday) Barack Obama. We have more on that, including the most popular suggestions, at the blog. We welcome your comments on that, as well as on whether or not salesforce.com is truly in the clouds with Service Cloud.
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© Copyright by AMR Research, Inc.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Bruce Richardson
Looking back at our coverage, we couldn’t help noting the delicious irony that the vendor most closely associated with the “no-software” vow was going against its own grain by buying a software company with products that are only available the old-fashioned way: on premises. To be fair, at the time of the acquisition, salesforce.com promised to deliver a multi-tenant version of InStranet on top of its Force.com platform as a service for delivery in FY2010 (starts February 1, 2009).
A hosted, single-tenant software cloud? Cumulus, stratus, cirrus, or nimbus?
Now fast forward to January 15, 2009: At a gathering in San Francisco, salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff unveiled Service Cloud for customer service and support. A closer look under the cirrostratus marketing cover shows Service Cloud consists of the existing salesforce.com platform as well as a hosted version of the InStranet product.
Hosted software as a cloud? I don’t mean to play the part of the purist, but I have to believe Mr. Benioff would have thrown the red flag at the nearest referee had any competitor tried to position a hosted, single-tenant product as a being in the cloud. Sure, you can offer the software on a subscription fee like you would software as a service (SaaS), but you don’t get any of the advantages of multi-tenant, nor are your upgrades relatively seamless.
After the briefing, we sent an e-mail asking, if new customers start with the InStranet product, how will they move their data from InStranet to the new Force.com platform? Will this require a new implementation or re-implementation? The answer that came back was it will vary by account, based on customer-specific integrations.
That’s a logical answer for the 50 or so customers that were using InStranet before the acquisition. But what about current salesforce.com customers that need the new functionality now and are willing to start with InStranet, moving to the Force.com version once it’s available? You would have to be in a lot of pain if you’re willing to endure the two implementations in a relatively short time span. As for staying on the legacy InStranet software indefinitely, how long do you think the “no-software” leader will want to continue to support a foreign antibody?
On The Blog
On the same day salesforce.com launched Service Cloud, it also announced its Ideas platform would be used by the Change.gov website as a new community site for American citizens to share their ideas with President-Elect (or President, if you’re reading this on Tuesday) Barack Obama. We have more on that, including the most popular suggestions, at the blog. We welcome your comments on that, as well as on whether or not salesforce.com is truly in the clouds with Service Cloud.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright by AMR Research, Inc.
Labels: CRM, Salesforce
posted by Albert van Grondelle at 5:21 AM
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