Integration as an on-demand service
Check out this panel discussion. It’s called Revolutions in Progress: The Case for Optimism
http://cdn.livestream.com/embed/techonomy?layout=4&clip=pla_c2a3f8fd-b51c-41a1-9029-af744ae6dd20&height=340&width=560&autoplay=false
I recently outlined some of the things the Informatica Cloud team is working on in anticipation of the cloud computing event of the year – Dreamforce 2011. (See the post Getting Ready for Dreamforce on the Perspectives blog.) Well, yesterday I had a chance to catch up with my friend Tom Wong – aka Mr. Dreamforce himself. Tom’s got a lot going on right now as his new company Eventley gets going (“if you’ve been to Dreamforce and used the Attendee Portal, you’ve used Eventforce by Eventley”), but somehow he’s found the time to connect with eight other Salesforce enthusiasts to organize “The Road2DF,” which has already become a movement leading up to the conference. Here’s they’re describing the journey:
”9 of us are driving cross-country 3,000 miles in an RV on the Road to Dreamforce. From Chicago to San Francisco over 4 days, we’re going to chronicle our journey and hope to connect with 100s of attendees and believers both online and at meetups along the way. JOIN THE MOVEMENT.”
The event schedule appears to be growing by the day with official stops planned for Chicago, Iowa City, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, LA, and of course San Francisco in time for Dreamforce. According to Tom, who has a history of getting very excited about Dreamforce, the ideas are flowing for lots of interesting activities and announcements along the way.
I think we’re going to hear a lot about this trip before during and after Dreamforce. It’s a great idea with some really passionate people involved. Talking to Tom I had this vision of the scene in Slapshot where the local boosters follow the team from city to city. I believe there were a few moon shots along the way – something I think this crew is going to want to avoid. Then the movie Roadtrip popped into my head. God speed!
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Image via Wikipedia
Unless of course, you’re talking about data integration. Then it’s very much a two way street. (Think both on-ramp and interstate…)
But I digress. Regardless, this is a great quote from Vivek Kundra, (now the former) Federal Chief Information Officer introducing the new The Cloud First Buyer’s Guide.
“The Movement to the Cloud is a One-Way Street.”
TechAmerica Foundation established a Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2) which will “make recommendations for how government should deploy cloud technologies and address policies that might hinder U.S. leadership of the cloud in the commercial space.” The first report was issued this week: 2011 U.S. Federal Strategy for the Safe and Secure Adoption of Cloud Computing.
The best summary I’ve seen so far (not surprisingly) comes from the Salesforce Blog: “Cloud First”: What’s Next. Peter Coffee published a Cloud First Buyer’s Guide for Government - A Simple Checklist. Worth printing for your cube…
Recently I presented on the topic of Salesforce data management at an Orlando user group called Dreamforce 2 You. We had a good discussion about some of the different data integration options available and I thought I would share a few of the slides. I’d be interested in your input and experiences.
Of course, I tend to be somewhat biased towards Informatica Cloud and the data integration as a service model….
Image via CrunchBase
Salesforce.com announced the 2010 AppExchange “Best of” Award winners today. They also posted a video to celebrate their 5 year anniversary.
This year’s winners are:
This recognition is based on quality and quantity of customer reviews during the year. Congratulations to all of the winners! (Here’s more information on each vendor and their winning app.)
And here’s the video…
Interesting, albeit not surprising, poll results about which CRM application is the most popular: Oracle OpenWorld CRM Smackdown!
It’s Salesforce.com by a long shot, but are Oracle, Microsoft and SAP gaining? The post goes on to ask: “Does Oracle need to own Salesforce to own on-demand CRM?”
The answer digs into market share, functionality, analyst opinion, and differentiation. Definitely worth the read.
Salesforce.com announced the winners of their annual AppExchange Customer Choice Awards today. Congratulations to all of the winners! They are:
According to the blog post:
“The Best of ’09 Customer Choice Awards are given to partners based on exceptional user reviews posted to the AppExchange during 2009.”
I notice that many of them (Informatica, InsideView, Clicktools and a few others) also won last year. Clearly the the best keep on getting better…
Congratulations to all of the winners!
I recently read Marc Benioff’s Behind the Cloud, which the Wall St. Journal calls, “a triumphalist memoir and business self-help manual.”
The book spends a considerable amount of time discussing the V2MOM, which is Play #100:
“Use V2MOM to Focus Your Goals and Align Your Organization.”
Benioff has been talking about the V2MOM and the company has been relying up upon it as a management tool from the beginning. Check out this 2003 article:
“His zenlike approach to life even permeates the elaborate management process he uses to run Salesforce.com. It’s called V2MOM — standing for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measurement. It’s about laying out a broad strategy, getting all the employees to agree on goals and methods, anticipating problems, evaluating tactics, and measuring results. Any new initiative is put to the V2MOM test.”
While some employees clearly don’t like V2MOM, I found it to be an extremely valuable way to align all levels of the organization and to build transparency into company priorities. Every employee has to have a V2MOM as Salesforce. Benioff has gone so far as to register the V2MOM domain!
So as 2010 rapidly approaches, what’s on your V2MOM for the year? Is your business aligned when it comes to the vision, values, methods, obstacles, and metrics? Sounds like a good exercise for your next management meeting, no?
You can read more about what Marc Benioff has to say about the V2MOM in this Behind the Cloud excerpt as well as in this destinationCRM article.
All the best in 2010! May all of your clouds be connected…(sorry, a small plug for my vision of cloud integration seemed appropriate)
Here’s a common use case for Salesforce CRM integration: opportunity-to-order synchronization with Microsoft Dynamics Navision.
Here’s a quick video of Salesforce to PeachTree integration. It’s been a while since I’ve seen PeachTree from Sage. I’m interested in why organizations are using it these days. Strengths / weaknesses?
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