Some time back I had attended an event by SalesForce.com in London, CloudForce 2010. In the CRM world, SalesForce is an awesome company that has given companies like Siebel and SAP a real run for their money. Not content to occupy the CRM space only, SalesForce is now targeting cloud computing with a difference: it is trying to marry cloud computing with content management systems and rich-internet application (RIA) development to develop and popularize an alternative application development and deployment model. A very ambitious and daring venture, I must say. In the world of IT changes can be either pretty fast or they can simply linger on (if not, we wouldn't find a single mainframe on the face of earth). Since many organizations would be haevily invested int the present status quo, it is a complex proposition at its best.
On the up side, SalesForce has built a brilliant RIA and is trying to leverage its knowledge to both help and tie in its clients. It is doing a brilliant effort to make partnerships and sell the idea on the force of its network. The marketing strategy seems to be brilliantly thought out, and the execution is marvellous. The deployed applications are said to take lesser time, are on the cloud and readily deployable to browsers, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. With lower costs, it can potentially be tempting for an entrepreneur to use the set up to launch an internet application. With "Chatter", they are also trying to present themselves as the secure facebook of the corporate world. With tools to analyse Twitter feeds and integrate it with SalesForce products AND the applications developed, the possibilities indeed seem mouth-watering. Having a functioning CRM RIA is a big plus here.
On the down side, I feel they are trying to do too many things and trying to be all things to all people. I am not sure how this hopscotch of ideas (When Azure Meets Joomla, Facebook and Twitter?) would work out without some seriously tough strategy planning and implementation: something that may turn out to be quite a mouthful even for the SalesForce marketing juggernaut. There have been systems that have promised develop once and run anywhere in different ways, but have failed when they have not given enough flexibility to developers and designers. Successful content management and application development systems like Joomla or Drupal come in handy on a typical LAMP (Lucene, Apache, MySQL and PHP) set-up with a nice net based UI to develop a simple,reasonably powerful and secure application that can run on any Windows or Linux based cloud. At any time a company can switch the cloud-operator or host themselves. With SalesForce, you are pretty much tied to them if you want the app. Another worry I have is that they have tied-up with Adobe to deliver their application development IDE. In many of my earlier blogs on RIAs, I have often complained about the lack of end-user focus in Adobe RIA applications like the erstwhile Flex. I sincerely hope SalesForce does not depend on them only for this IDE.
In conclusion, the product idea definitely has an immense potential to succeed, but the path is far from easy and there are some problems that I can already envision. It will be interesting to see how the application develops eventually, as other cloud providers are sure to counter this massive marketing blitz with moves of their own.
On the up side, SalesForce has built a brilliant RIA and is trying to leverage its knowledge to both help and tie in its clients. It is doing a brilliant effort to make partnerships and sell the idea on the force of its network. The marketing strategy seems to be brilliantly thought out, and the execution is marvellous. The deployed applications are said to take lesser time, are on the cloud and readily deployable to browsers, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. With lower costs, it can potentially be tempting for an entrepreneur to use the set up to launch an internet application. With "Chatter", they are also trying to present themselves as the secure facebook of the corporate world. With tools to analyse Twitter feeds and integrate it with SalesForce products AND the applications developed, the possibilities indeed seem mouth-watering. Having a functioning CRM RIA is a big plus here.
On the down side, I feel they are trying to do too many things and trying to be all things to all people. I am not sure how this hopscotch of ideas (When Azure Meets Joomla, Facebook and Twitter?) would work out without some seriously tough strategy planning and implementation: something that may turn out to be quite a mouthful even for the SalesForce marketing juggernaut. There have been systems that have promised develop once and run anywhere in different ways, but have failed when they have not given enough flexibility to developers and designers. Successful content management and application development systems like Joomla or Drupal come in handy on a typical LAMP (Lucene, Apache, MySQL and PHP) set-up with a nice net based UI to develop a simple,reasonably powerful and secure application that can run on any Windows or Linux based cloud. At any time a company can switch the cloud-operator or host themselves. With SalesForce, you are pretty much tied to them if you want the app. Another worry I have is that they have tied-up with Adobe to deliver their application development IDE. In many of my earlier blogs on RIAs, I have often complained about the lack of end-user focus in Adobe RIA applications like the erstwhile Flex. I sincerely hope SalesForce does not depend on them only for this IDE.
In conclusion, the product idea definitely has an immense potential to succeed, but the path is far from easy and there are some problems that I can already envision. It will be interesting to see how the application develops eventually, as other cloud providers are sure to counter this massive marketing blitz with moves of their own.
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