Just come across an interesting Blog post by Lauren Ingram, a software QA engineer at Salesforce.com.  The full title of the post is “The Digital Age: Reading in Reverse: How to make a profit.“  It’s well worth a read …

In Lauren’s Post there’s a reference to a Gartner research note (G00168995, 22 July 2009).  In this research note Gartner state that despite a decline in sales due to the economy they have not seen a drop-off in their customers requesting vendor evaluations related to Sales Force Automation (SFA).  The note includes, of course, one of Gartner’s classic magic quadrants.  The magic quadrant, a square (shown here on the right – click to enlarge) divided into four “quadrants”, is essentially a visual aid for comparative discussions of vendors attributes.  Of course, the placement of vendors in the square needs careful interpretation.  All the SFA vendors in the square offer Software as a Service (SaaS – read as service in the cloud), one of Salesforce.com’s key marketing attributes – and, Salesforce.com is in the prestigious top right-hand corner of the magic quadrant.

Lauren summarises the theme of his Post in the final sentences, “… Salesforce is betting on the service cloud.  Today, we’re reading in reverse, making our customers available to their clients.  And it’s all because you, the reader, insist on using that Twitter account.”