Stuck in the Post Dreamforce Cloud #DF12

Have you recovered from Dreamforce 2012? Next week I’ll be at Oracle Open World talking about cloud integration and to be honest, I’d much rather write about the Marc Benioff show than register for Larry’s World at this point. (Although, I do wonder if we’ll see the 2nd tweet from Mr. Ellison and what his position will be on all things cloud this year. Remember the @Benioff  boot out last time around? Some classic tweets.

I guess like a lot of people you could say I’m stuck in the PDC (Post Dreamforce Cloud) at this point. I’ve been spending time in the Dreamforce Chatter org reviewing sessions, watching YouTube videos and reading a plethora of blogger opinion about the conference (see links below).  Sound familiar?

To bring back some of the #DF12 energy, today I hosted a webinar focused on some of the Dreamforce data management highlights. The presentation congratulated the 2012 Informatica Cloudy Award winners and featured live demonstrations of two of the hottest topics at the Informatica booth:

• Salesforce and SAP integration
• Master Data Management for Salesforce

You can download the slides and watch the recording here:

Informatica Cloud @ Dreamforce 2012 from Darren Cunningham

Denis Pombriant wrote one of the best summaries of Dreamforce I’ve seen so far here.  I also enjoyed his interview with Brent Leary from CRM Essentials.

Related articles

• Dreamforce 2012: Before and During (blogs.salesforce.com)
• Salesforce Customers are Asking for Big Data Management #DF12 (cloudintegration.wordpress.com)
• Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise (forbes.com)
• Dreamforce 2012: A Few of Our Favorite Tweets #DF12 (designingdesignthinkingdrivenoperations.wordpress.com)
• 20 Awesome Instagram Photos from Dreamforce 2012 (radian6.com)

Salesforce Customers are Asking for Big Data Management #DF12

Two things stuck out for me at Dreamforce 2012:

1. What an amazing ecosystem Salesforce has built. The Cloud expo was packed with high-quality booths and there were over 3000 people at the partner keynote! Congratulations to the partner success team and kudos on the newly designed Appexchange.
2. How important cloud integration / enterprise connectivity has become to Salesforce customers, partners and prospects. These two slides from that same partner keynote say it all:

When it comes to the back-office, Big Data Management apps top the list of Salesforce customer requirements. Oh, and by the way, all new cloud applications must connect across the business.

Today two post-Dreamforce 2012 articles caught my attention that address the need for cloud integration head on. In his post – Plumbing the Salesforce Clouds is Your Business, Mark Smith from Ventana Research notes:

“The challenges your organization faces with data are getting larger, and the financial benefits of data in the cloud, such as reduced TCO and reduced implementation fees, are substantive. Too much time and too many resources are wasted in manual approaches where data is transitioned inconsistently and incorrectly. Automation helps organizations rationalize their overall information management efforts.”

Joshua Greenbaum at Enterprise Applications Consulting has this to say his his article, Salesforce.com, Enterprise Platforms, and the End of the End of Software:

“And the tools are there, or on the way. Hence the refrigerator pitch, though it was interestingly devoid of details on just how easy it will be to build an integration framework that could tie together a Pandora-like pure cloud environment or a more common hybrid cloud/on-premise environment. But heck, that’s really hard. It took SAP years to get NetWeaver out of slideware mode and into simple and easy to implement mode, despite all their efforts. So I don’t expect Saleforce.com to settle this issue in just one Dreamforce. It will take a while, no doubt.”

I’ll write about the Informatica Cloud integration and MDM session later this week on the Perspective blog. In the meantime, I’ve embedded the slides below so you can see for yourself how three enterprise organizations have taken advantage of data integration, data quality and master data management technology to drive overall Salesforce adoption and success. It’s Big Cloud Data Management in action!

Power the Connected Enterprise with Cloud Integration and Master Data Management (MDM) from Darren Cunningham

Related articles

• Salesforce.com reveals brief roadmap for AppExchange through 2013 (zdnet.com)
• Dreamforce 2012: Salesforce.com Launches Dropbox Enterprise Rival Chatterbox (techweekeurope.co.uk)
• Dreamforce 2012: Betting On Social Enterprise (cloudave.com)
• Salesforce.com’s New Social Strategy is Brilliant, Here’s Why (studentforce.wordpress.com)

SAP, meet Force.com #socialenterprise

Image via CrunchBase

Last week salesforce.com launched a new campaign targeted at SAP customers: “Unlock your back office and become a social enterprise.” The message is clear – build a layer of agility around your legacy ERP system and immediately increase the business value of your existing investment.

SAP, meet Force.com…

How is this possible, you ask?

“By unlocking and extending the data trapped in your SAP ERP deployment with mobile and social apps built on Force.com.”

The campaign clearly highlights the benefits of establishing the right cloud integration strategy early. It also highlights specific cloud application integration and data management partners, which is nice to see.

Here’s a presentation outlining some of the considerations, best practices as well as an Informatica Cloud demonstration of SAP and Salesforce integration. I’ll also be hosting a webinar this week that will focus on Oracle EBS integration with salesforce.com. Clearly cloud integration is in the spotlight.

Salesforce and SAP Integration with Informatica Cloud

View more presentations from Darren Cunningham

Related articles

• ERP cloud wars – Vendor Innovation & Competition Will Benefit Businesses (zdnet.com)
• Oracle floats Fusion apps, puffs up public cloud (go.theregister.com)
• Backed by H-P, SAP Jumps On Cloud Bandwagon And Rides To $62 (forbes.com)

CRM Smackdown: Oracle vs. Salesforce.com

Paul Greenberg published a great review of Oracle OpenWorld today (sessions = good; keynotes = really bad).  He includes some of the main Ellison vs. Benioff sideshow highlights and provides some good details on Oracle’s CRM roadmap. CRM Market Analyst Lauren Carlson takes it step further with a summary of each vendor’s capabilities in her post: Oracle OpenWorld CRM Smackdown.  She also includes an interesting survey, which is still open for input. She poses the questions:

1) Who do you view as the leader in CRM?

• SAP
• Oracle
• Salesforce.com
• Microsoft
• Other:

2) Will Oracle acquire Salesforce.com?

• Yes
• No

3) Who’s more full of it?

• Benioff
• Ellison
• It’s a tie.

You can take the survey here. The results will be interesting.