Megavendors, Cloud Judo, and The Innovator’s Dilemma

Back in 2007 Ken Rudin, CEO of the early stage SaaS BI start-up called LucidEra (and former Siebel employee) was asked about the cloud announcement from Business Objects (before they were acquired by SAP).  He made a number of observations about the challenges enterprise software companies face when it comes to transitioning to the cloud. Here’s the interview.

Today, Dave Kellogg wrote a great post about Oracle’s series of cloud announcements this week. I’ve re-blogged it here.

Back in 2007 Ken Rudin, CEO of the early stage SaaS BI start-up called LucidEra (and former Siebel employee) was asked about the cloud announcement from Business Objects (before they were acquired by SAP).  He made a number of observations about the challenges enterprise software companies face when it comes to transitioning to the cloud. […]

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A Not So Anti-Social Enterprise IT Message

I attended Cloudforce San Francisco last week and was quite impressed with how the Social Enterprise message has been refined and strengthened since Dreamforce. As always at a Salesforce event, top customers were in the spotlight, telling their stories about the business impact of CRM applications and the Force.com cloud platform. What was different at this Cloudforce was the representation from senior levels of IT on the main stage and the focus on the importance of cloud integration to Social Enterprise success.

Check a couple of these headlines and quotes:

Salesforce.com Makes Friends With CIOs

“Benioff is sounding uncharacteristically cautious as he lays out his expansion plans because the enterprise door, formerly shut, is opening to Salesforce’s SaaS approach. And instead of the sales staff, now it’s the IT leaders often who are the ones opening it.”

A Barb-less Benioff? Salesforce.com Grows Up

“Rather than blasting Oracle (ORCL) as a ‘false cloud’ provider or taking swipes at SAP as a dinosaur, CEO Marc Benioff extended olive branches to those rivals. In his keynote, he talked about ‘coexisting’ with those companies, stressing the need for ‘deep integration’ between salesforce.com’s products and the widely deployed software.” 

Here’s the @benioff’s Cloudforce keynote:

 

Related articles

• What Salesforce.com Results Say About Oracle Battle (informationweek.com)
• Does Salesforce.com Own The Social Enterprise? (forbes.com)
• Businesses need to embrace the “social revolution,” says Salesforce’s Benioff (venturebeat.com)

Oracle to Join the Cloud Crowd?

Image via Wikipedia

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…

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.

Mission Critical Cloud Integration

Looking for an example of how cloud data integration can deliver both business and environmental impact? Check out this story: Informatica Cloud Helps RAE Systems Respond Quickly to Gulf Oil Spill. It’s also an example of a company that has the best of both worlds: Salesforce CRM integrated with Oracle ERP.

Speaking of the Best of Both Worlds, the billboards are all over San Francisco ahead of Oracle OpenWorld. Salesforce is also promoting their integration whitepaper.

Related Articles

• Top 10 hot topics at Oracle OpenWorld (infoworld.com)
• Will Oracle Buy Informatica Next? (nytimes.com)