Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Salesforce.com, the platform- As Ernie Cormier, VP of Business Solutions at Nextel argued on the panel...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 21:00:07 -0500

November 11, 2003
Salesforce.com, the platform

I'm blogging live from Salesforce.com's inaugural Dreamforce User Conference at
the Westin St Francis in San Francisco. Yes, they offer Wi-Fi in the keynote
hall and that's a wonderful thing.
It's particularly appropriate given the panel discussion I just finished
hosting. The subject was "the ultimate clients for utility computing," and as
you can imagine much of our discussion focused on the wireless delivery of
utility-style applications.

First, what's interesting about the utility computing paradigm is that until
recently we've spent the majority of our time talking about infrastructure
issues: Web services, provisioning, scheduling, virtualization and server
consolidation are the typical buzzwords.

As Ernie Cormier, VP of Business Solutions at Nextel argued on the panel, Web
services are already here in the form of a range of third party Java
applications al-ready deployed on anything from cell phones to PDAs. Yes, we
still can't expect blanket coverage from wireless carrier's infrastructure, but
the applications are available.

David Vaskevich, SVP & CTO at Microsoft (who, by the way, reports to Bill
Gates), argued that once we have this ubiquitous network it will allow us to
access everything from pictures of our kids, our favorite music and corporate
data on an Internet terminal in our car.

But what's missing right now is that we need to offer users the seamless
transition of data between, for example, a car's computer and a variety of
handheld devices. "We need to break down the seams," he said. The dream is that
applications will intelligently populate the device you're using with relevant
data based on your location, such as driving directions while you are in the
car.

Chris Thomas, Chief E-Strategist at Intel agreed, adding that e-forms and the
like will help revolutionize how enterprise applications are developed and
delivered. We have started moving away from a Web browser-centric UI to a series
of shared application components assembled on the fly.
That's not a new message, but what is new is the fact that utility-style
applications are now being delivered. It's a challenge that my other fellow
panelist, Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO at RIM, attempted to tackle. RIM
built its business on always on wireless email. But now the company is all about
providing a platform for developing and delivering all manner of pre-built and
distributed applications. RIM's Blackberry, for one, is certainly not browser
centric.

And so that turns my thoughts to Salesforce.com. In case you missed yesterday's
news [link to:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/11/10/HNsalesforce_1.html], the company
unveiled an upgrade to its Sforce development platform. The company actually
calls Sforce a hosted application server. So if you think about it,
Salesforce.com is arguing that your applications don't need to run on your own
servers. In addition, Salesforce.com can deliver your application - complete
with integrated CRM - to any device, anywhere.

When Salesforce.com's latest upgrades go live in a couple of weeks, it affirms
the fact that we need to move from talking about "when" to "how" utility-style
applications of any type (not just CRM) now work. Web services deployments are a
reality.

My final thought is this: Salesforce.com is planning to roll out ERP-style
func-tionality in subsequent releases. The big message here is that the company
believes it doesn't actually matter what applications are delivered in a hosted
fashion. In short, Salesforce.com is stealing pages from Amazon.com and eBay's
playbook. It’s not about hosted-CRM anymore. Salesforce.com's business is
finally becoming what CEO Marc Benioff always said it would be - a utility that
sits on the Internet delivering companies any application on demand.

Update: the hotel's Internet connection is not letting my VPN create a tunnel,
so Ephraim is posting this for me. Frustratingly, VPN support is something many
confer-ence venues are yet to accommodate.
- Mark Jones

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz at November 11, 2003 04:24 PM
http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/000117.html

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