Google is truly quite an amazing Company. Facts and Figures below – enjoy …
(Original post, with some minor corrections, can be found here: http://www.pingdom.com/ – “Pingdom offers services to monitor the uptime and performance of websites and servers on the Internet“).
Today (Tuesday 2 Feb.) an enterprise collaboration tool from SAP, that is based on Google Wave, will enter public beta. With the informative beta name 12Sprints, the application will allow “users to collaborate on solving business problems in real time.”
Being dependent on Google Wave, SAP will be following Google’s classic approach with 12Sprints having a beta period that will “never end.” In acknowledgement of this, David Meyer (senior vice president of emerging technologies, SAP) has stated that the “… whole idea is to learn from [its] usage.”
Why is this interesting? Software giant SAP have plans to launch web-based sales management software (i.e. SaaS) in the middle of 2010 – they will be competing directly with their long term rival salesforce.com.
Of course, there’s the obligatory YouTube video’s (there are 13 in all) for 12Sprints:
And, you can become a friend on Facebook, and follow the beta on Twitter …
12Sprints is an example of an Enterprise 2.0 tool – a tool that enables decisions based on the response from multiply persons within the organisation. But, essentially it employs the same tools used to make a decision as “normal” business group might. However, SAP appear to be taking Enterprise 2.0 serious. Below is a brief video of part of a round-table held by SAP titled “Enterprise 2.0 – A Look into the Crystal Ball” (this video is about Gravity a forerunner of 12Sprints).
Observe, 12Sprints is an excellent example of the use of Google’s Wave within the organisation, but it’s not a replacement for Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, etc (i.e. unlike salesforce.com’s Chatter – which is yet to become available in the wild. In beta, or otherwise!).
In a rather superficial Q&A in Computer Business Review (CBR), late last year, Parker Harris (executive VP of Technology, and co-founder of salesforce.com) identifies what salesforce.com will be concentrating on in 2010.
The majority of the article focuses on Cloud Computing gaining acceptance, salesforce.com competitors, and [Cloud] Security. Then, in the final paragraph, Parker not surprisingly states that the Service Cloud, to which he is actually referring to salesforce.com’s Service Cloud 2, “will be the next billion dollar business”, but, then there’s no surprise there. Similarly, and maybe more significantly, he acknowledges that Collaboration (Wikipedia: “a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals”) is not fully understood by business. Here Parker is referring to salesforce.com’s pending collaborative layer/tool Chatter. Parker, or Janine Milne the author of the Q&A, then slip into verbal melt down and end the Q&A with “instead of being data-driven your data will come alive … the whole concept of viral communication will take off.” Now, I’m familiar with the phrase Viral Marketing, and one of my favourites (below) is the Cadbury’s (should that now be Kraft?) Gorilla Advert of 2007, but viral communication? With definition’s like “is the dissemination of information (either true facts or plain rumours) between individuals by self replication” (Behavioral Finance Group) – Oh, come on!
As a stark comparison in the same edition of CBR there’s another related Q&A. Rob Howard, founder and CTO of enterprise collaboration firm Telligent (“a pioneer of social media platforms”) explains how social media is becoming the established way for businesses to communicate – Rob also has a blog Enterprise 2.0 and social computing. Rob’s reply to “will 2010 be year of social media?“, is that he doesn’t think we are there yet, and that we have some 12 to 18 months for the market to mature. More pertinently he warns against the misguided belief that Social media replaces the way business work – and that it’s all about “integration”.
As an act of due diligence I searched for the phrase “viral communication”. For your amusement here are some of the references I found: from the MIT Media Lab of 2005 a disturbing claim that “Viral Communications focuses on constructing agile, scalable, collaborative systems that permit uncontrolled growth, minimal power use, and maximum ability to intercommunicate, with viral architectures moving the intelligence from the trunk to the leaves.” [Aargh!] And, in Changeworksblog, written by Sue Tupling, you’ll find several posts listed against the keyword/s “viral communication” – but only one post, from 2008, includes the phrase. And, finally in an Abstract of the IIW Institute of Information Management, “The paradigm of viral communication” (published in 2002!), which apparently identifies “… viral messages as a new paradigm of communication …” So, now you know.
Chatter: chat⋅ter (from Wiktionary)
Noun – chatter
There’s a lot of talk at the moment on the web about salesforce.com’s new social media offering: Chatter. Marc, once again, has skilfully used his salesforce.com playbook (see Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry
Chatter, when it becomes available next year, should provide a social media layer across salesforce.com Sales, Service and Custom clouds. It is also planned to integrate with other market social computing platforms – see my earlier post
Below are my selection of five posts relating to Chatter.
They cover:
In his Post “Salesforce Pushes Social CRM Technology –But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone” Jeremiah Owyang (“a Web Strategist”) praises salesforce.com for taking the lead in the CRM vendors pack in providing tools that connect the enterprise with the social web. But, rightly states that technology alone is not sufficient to “truly embrace customers in the social web.” That “80% is culture, process, roles, and strategy change.”
Meanwhile, Jeffrey M. Kaplan (a Founder and Managing Director of THINKstrategies) in his Post “Salesforce.com: The Double-Edged Sword of Iterative Marketing” states that he admires salesforce.com for “genuinely enhanced its offerings and expanded its capabilities” with Chatter. However, he claims that many of the attendees he interviewed (following the keynote introduction of Chatter at Dreamforce 2009 – see my earlier post) “were confused about Chatter.” He claims that “salesforce.com has also succeeded in confusing its customers, partners, analysts and the press, as well as its own salespeople …”
In a more enthusiast post Michael Fauscette, in “Salesforce.com introduces the world to the Collaboration Cloud”, states that “Chatter moves from the app itself …[to focus] on the people…people become the platform of the new social business.”
Steve Hodgkinson (of Ovum, part of the Datamonitor Group – “a premium business information and market analysis company“) in his Post “Salesforce: chattering its way to social integration in the cloud” (an extract taken from Ovum’s Straight Talk service) correctly states that chatter “will provide a means to stimulate collaborative information flows between the users at the enterprise’s sales and service front line.” But then Steve is rightfully concerned that technology alone doesn’t “create a flow of useful, relevant and timely information.”
Finally, in “Has Your Organization Thought Through its Social Media Policy?” Dee Albritton, of Fast Forward, in a Post on The Nonprofit Technology Network site NTEN, warns non-profits that their “clients could see their social network site.” Whilst there is no explicit reference to Chatter, Dee goes on to say, “it is hard to turn down a client for services when they saw the picture of the big check on your site.” Dee references the results of a survey of 1,400 CIOs of companies with 100 plus employees:
Interesting times …
Dreamforce 2009. Keynote – Day 1. Marc Benioff (CEO, salesforce.com) and Parker Harris (Co-founder. Head of Technology, salesforce.com) introduce Chatter: ” … it’s very very simple … the magic of Facebook and Twitter brought to the enterprise. … Join the conversation.”
It’s Marc enjoying himself …
The current Economist debates is:
Cloud Computing: This house believes that the cloud can’t be entirely trusted.
With Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, surprise-surprise being Against the motion.
So a brief resume of Marc Benioff, and his poster child salesforce.com:
Intrigued by web sites like Amazon.com Marc started salesforce.com in the mid-1990s whilst still working part-time at ORACLE (which then employed 200 people). Larry Ellison, CEO of ORACLE, was his mentor and provided some $2 million seed money to Marc’s and his “software on the web, on-demand” company (though this phrase is currently out of favour, with Marc prefering real-time, SaaS and multitenant). In this short history salesforce.com has received many business awards: The Wired 40 three years in a row: 2005-2007 (No. 7 in 2007), Forbes Top Ten Disrupters (2006-2007), Forbes 25 Fastest-growing Tech Companies (2007, No. 3), and BusinessWeek Top 100 Most Innovative Companies (2006, No. 79). Essentially, salesforce.com continues to be a disruptive success.
Salesforce.com reported in July 2009, at its earnings conference Q2 2010: 2 million users, a customer base of 63,200, and a net-profit of $21.2 million. It’s moving up market with customers like CNN, Motorola, and Starbucks. It’s moving vertically with investments in the financial and healthcare industry. A threat? Well Microsoft and ORACLE are expanding their offerings to compete in the SaaS arena. At the Q2 conference Benioff boasted scoring wins against Microsoft (much in love with their own CRM) and ORACLE (busy building it’s own CRM). Then, in October, Microsoft offers customers of salesforce.com, and ORACLE CRM, the equivalent of 7 months free switch subscription until the end of 2009 (however, after the trial the standard twelve months contract would apply – compare this with salesforce.com rolling monthly contract …)
But salesforce.com, with its Cloud suite, is very much tied to success of it’s customers with Applications, then Platform, then tools to build applications
The latter two being more than 25% of new business.
Contra to the scale of the Google kingdom Salesforce.com relies on only two data centres – and, the main one in California has only 500 servers and handles 200 million transactions per day.
The Economist debate ends with a Post Debate follow-up on Friday 20th November – so go there soon …
Gartner Group top 10 trends for 2010
Last month the Gartner Group analysts highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends for 2010. Number one is Cloud Computing – up from third position last year.
So for a small to medium sized charities what are the benefits of Cloud Computing?
Firstly, there is an acronyms you’ve most likely heard in connection with Cloud Computing: SAAS.
SAAS (Software-as-a-Service) is where a service provider gives access to their software via the Internet. All you need is a PC, a browser, and Internet access. All the back end hardware and software is managed for you. So let us consider the SaaS aspect of Cloud Computing – what are the opportunities of SaaS for small to medium sized charities:
But there are risks:
Garner Group Hype Cycle 2008
In the Gartner Group’s Hype Cycle special report of 2008 Cloud Computing was highlighted as “the latest super-hyped concept in IT”, with 2 to 5 years before main steam adoption. It’s already main stream!
For small to medium sized charities, then, with limited capital, limited space, limited access to technical staff, do consider choosing SaaS and reduce your dependence on hardware.
Salesforce.com is the poster child of SaaS. It can be used for SFA (Sales Force Automation), or as a CRM (Contact Relationship Management) tool.
Consider fund raising as an example. Salesforce.com has created a special configuration of it’s SaaS for non-profit organisations, and charities. This Non-profit edition of Salesforce.com provides:
Obviously, much of this can be handled by a custom built database – but the long-run costs of developing and maintaining such an application can become prohibitive. Using a SaaS CRM like Salesforce.com to deploy a streamlined application is almost always going to be faster, and more flexible.
Finally, keeping the theme of fund raising, using Salesforce.com is about gaining and retaining donors; not about “managing” them – it’s more about managing the increasingly rich information you gather about them. But ultimately it’s not about “donor” strategy, process, or the technology. It’s people – and this includes your staff.
Another Social Media webinar for you to view. This one is from Customer Think Corp, and is called “Showcase: Social CRM” – tagline “harvesting the power of Social Media and CRM systems.”
After an introduction by Bob Thomson (CEO of CustomerThink), three companies make presentations: Lithium (“the leading Social CRM solutions“), HelpStream (“the first company in the world to deliver a truly social customer service and relationship management system”), and SAP (“the world’s leading provider of business software“). Of the three Lithium made the most valuable contribution to the webinar – the remaining two appear to have not fully appreciated the implication of the new marketing paradigm …
Bob’s introduction to the webinar included reference to a venn diagram showing the intersection of the external Social Media cloud, and the internal Business CRM system. It’s the intersection where the interesting conversations exist – real message of the show.
Social Media is people, fun, ad hoc, external, experiential, voluntary
CRM is process, efficiency, required, … Business
The Lithium’s contribution to the webinar captured my attention: the crucial dependence on Super Users for successful on-line support forums. Essentially, it’s not possible to create a customer network, it must be allowed to grow. These super users will promote you wares on your behalf; it’s not merely a matter of “if you build it, [they] will come.” The excellent example in the webinar is from a Logitech (“… designs personal peripherals to help people enjoy a better experience with the digital world”) support forum – where the super user like KachiWachi appears to spend the majority of each day resolving Logitech’s customers problems for free … and, in doing so, converts many potential leads into sales. But there is a price to pay: these super users must be rewarded – and their reward takes the form of expert ratings – an acknowledgement of the expertise and collaboration with other users of the forum.
This on-line support forum community will even address the risk of competitors seeding the forum with misinformation. Your on-line advocates will quickly pounce on the perpetrators and expose them …
Earlier this week, 30th September 2009, Google opened up their Wave preview to about 100,000 people. Salesforce.com, with their interest in the service cloud , are naturally one of the first to demo Wave integrated with their CRM. In a Salesforce Force.com Blog entry called “Getting in Front of the Wave” you will find background details on Google’s Wave and a YouTube video (see below) on how the Wave platform might be integrated with Salesforce.com …
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