Oracle to Join the Cloud Crowd?

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Yesterday I recommended that Larry Ellison read Marc Benioff’s book. It seems that he did. #Nextslide.

Here’s a summary of the Oracle Public Cloud and the Oracle Social Network – clearly ZDNET is not impressed!

And here’s how @benioff replied on Twitter. #Nextslide.

 

 

 

 

RIP Steve Jobs.  A true legend. A great loss.

Related articles

• Oracle Public Cloud Announcement: Salesforce is a Roach Motel (searchenginejournal.com)
• Oracle’s Larry Ellison finally puts his head in the cloud (venturebeat.com)
• Ellison Reveals Oracle’s Public Cloud; Calls Salesforce The ‘Roach Motel’ Of Cloud Services (techcrunch.com)
• Oracle being dicks: cancels Marc Benioff’s keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld (dccrowley.posterous.com)
• Benioff Bounced From Oracle Stage (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Oracle OpenWorld snub fails to put off Salesforce CEO (go.theregister.com)

Did Larry Ellison Forget to Read @Benioff’s Book?

I’ve been attending Oracle Open World all week and tracking the hashtag #oow11 on Twitter and I have to say both pale in comparison to Dreamforce 2011 in terms of energy, excitement and buzz. Until last night, when Marc Benioff tweeted that Larry had cancelled his keynote. The gloves came off and the tweet stream came alive.

Yes, the irony of student becoming teacher has not gone unnoticed in the twittersphere/blogosphere (or whatever the kids are calling it these days).

Yes, Salesforce runs on Oracle’s database, but in the direct CRM and PaaS channel, the two companies are direct competitors.

All Larry Ellison had to do was pick up Benioff’s book – Behind the Cloud and he would have noted Play #22 (and subsequently #23 and #24). It outlines many of the tactics salesforce.com deployed to successfully win the battle against Siebel back in the day (before they were acquired by Oracle). Going beyond the well-publicized protests (which he has also organized today), Benioff:

“Ran an ad against Seibel with a “Don’t get bullied” theme with a boy writing on the chalkboard, “I will not give my lunch money to Siebel” and “I will not spend my summer vacation installing Siebel.”

In the book he recommends that you, “Hit balls over the net to your competitors. By Siebel acknowledging Salesforce.com, they legitimized them.  The tail wagged the dog.”

Well it appears today that the dog is once again being wagged.

Check out how @benioff has dealt with the cancellation on Twitter – his keynote could still trump Oracle’s cloud session later in the day. Well played, sir!

You can watch Marc Benioff’s keynote live from the hotel next door or follow the streaming video here. As he says, The Cloud Must Go On!

Your move Larry…

Congratulations to the destinationCRM 2011 CRM Market Leaders

Interested in the evolving CRM market? Planning on attending Dreamforce this month?

If you answered yes to either question, you’re going to want to take the time to read the 10th Annual CRM Market Leader award summary over on destinationCRM.

Here’s a summary of this year’s winners by category:

• Enterprise CRM Suite:  Salesforce.com
• Midmarket CRM Suite: Salesforce.com
• Small Business CRM Suite: Salesforce.com
• Sales Force Automation: Salesforce.com
• Incentive Management: Xactly
• Marketing Solutions: Marketo
• Business Intelligence: IBM (Cognos)
• Data Quality: Informatica
• Open Source CRM: Sugar CRM
• Consultancies: Innoveer

The magazine also announced their CRM Influential Leaders. They are:

• Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com chairman and CEO – A Ubiquitous Presence
• Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO – The Deal Maker
• Esteban Kolsky, Thinkjar Founder and Principal – An Analyst’s Analyst
• Andrew Mason, Groupon Founder and CEO – A Group Leader
• Clara Shih, Hearsay Social Founder and CEO – The Social Butterfly
• Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn President and CEO – A Public Statement

Congratulations to this year’s winners! They are both impressive lists.  See you at Dreamforce!

Related articles

• Importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (drdianehamilton.wordpress.com)
• Oracle Rolls To $37 With Push From InQuira (blogs.forbes.com)
• Salesforce Irons it Out: 21st Century Social Enterprise Certified (zdnet.com)

BBC News on Cloud Computing: Going Beyond Buzzwords

Image via CrunchBase

It’s not just the questions I get asked, but the articles I’m now reading also indicate to me that cloud computing has reached a tipping point in the enterprise. This statement from Oracle’s Larry Ellison on the importance of the cloud to the company’s earnings is also a pretty good indicator:

“In Q3, we signed several large hardware and software deals with some of the biggest names in cloud computing….Oracle is the technology that powers the cloud.”

Clearly the cloud is not just “water vapor,” as he once so famously claimed.

This week the BBC published a great article on cloud computing with a very (and fairly mainstream) bent: Cloud computing: How to get your business ready. While it doesn’t specifically call out the important role of cloud data integration (the topic of one of my first posts on this blog), the article does include a nice overview of the different flavors of cloud computing and a six-step checklist from Symantec for organizations “moving into the cloud:”

1. Check out the reputation of the service provider.
2. Security is key.
3. Investigate how the cloud provider makes back-up copies of your data, how you can move the data to another provider, and what happens if the provider goes out of business.
4. Work hard to get a good service level agreement with clear financial penalties to ensure a good service.
5. Be wary of industry certifications, because they capture just a moment in time.
6. Try the service.

The BBC article also includes commentary on the cultural aspects of moving to the cloud. Ironically (at least to me), it’s a representative from Microsoft who points out: “Moving into the cloud is a cultural shift as well as a technology shift.”

Be sure to read the entire BBC Business News article on Cloud Computing here.

Related Articles

• Federal CIO Releases Paper Detailing Government’s #Cloud Computing Strategy (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Buffett Has An Elephant Gun But Oracle’s Ellison Has A Howitzer For Acquisitions (blogs.forbes.com)

Oracle CRM vs. Salesforce Smackdown Poll Results

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.

Related Articles

• Oracle vs. Salesforce – CRM of Choice (thetechscoop.net)
• Oracle CEO Throws Gauntlet In Saleforce.com Battle (informationweek.com)
• CRM Reborn: Takeaways from Oracle OpenWorld 2010 (blogs.innoveer.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.

Rants on the Cloud

With a shout-out to General Larry Platt and his +3M hits on YouTube, my friend @Nenshad for tweeting the line overheard at Oracle recently, Mr. Marc Benioff for taking more shots at Oracle and SAP in this Information Week article, and of course Mr. Larry Ellison’s now famous “cloud is water vapor” rant, here’s my version of the “Rants on the Cloud.”

Rants on the Cloud

Rants on the cloud
Rants on the cloud
Lookin’ like a fool with rants on the cloud
Investing in hardware
Software on the ground, making lots of noise with your rants on the cloud
Call yourself a cool cat looking like a fool
Trying to ignore the market shift to the cloud
Move  it up!!
HEY! Stop your rants on the cloud
Lookin like a fool, walkin talking
With your on-premise implementations on the ground.
Move it up!
Hey get your hardware and software off the ground,
Lookin’ like a fool not investigating the benefits of the cloud.
Maybe too much hype
But enterprise software’s turned sideways, and yes the noise is getting loud
But don’t call yourself a cool cat looking like a fool
Lookin’ like a fool with your rants on the cloud.

Anyone want to record it?