I came across this article today, and it got my thinking. A week ago I ordered my New York Giants season in review DVD. While I received an order confirmation email confirming that I would receive the product in 5 to 7 days, I haven’t gotten it yet, or another email confirming its whereabouts. Another … Continue reading »
Posted in February 2008 …
OK, This is Cool…
As a miserable failure in the music business, I am glad to see the ivory towers come down. R.E.M. (a band I have loved for a while – as anyone who was at our SugarCon event at the Testarossa winery will agree) has open sourced a few of its new songs. The license it is … Continue reading »
The Power Goes Out for RIM and Salesforce
The power/service outages that both RIM and Salesforce.com suffered the past week are nothing new. Both companies have dealt with these well-publicized events in the past, both because of technical issues or upgrades. SaaS providers have always claimed non-disruptive upgrades are an important reason why customers should buy online, but as is often the case, … Continue reading »
Much Ado About Gnuthing…
Or should it be Much Gnu About Nothing? Either way, my old firm put out a report about the “disruption” the GPL v3 may be causing in the open source community. I disagree with much of the argument here. But, maybe that is because I work for a core OS vendor, not an OEM provider, … Continue reading »
Oracle Buying Salesforce.com: It Was Inevitable….Wasn’t It?
With all the talk of Oracle purchasing Salesforce.com, it got me thinking…isn’t it kind of inevitable that Oracle would end up buying Salesforce? On-demand ERP/CRM provider NetSuite, which Ellison owns a majority share in, cannot by scaled to the size that Salesforce.com has been in the next decade, maybe not in the next two. In … Continue reading »
Facebook Lock-in…Sound Familiar?
Just read a New York Times article that describes how members of Facebook are having to fight Facebook to remove their data after they leave. The more things change… Lock-in strategies have come and gone, in different guises. But one of the most interesting is the one that occurs with web-based applications and data storage. … Continue reading »
Open Source…Meet Healthcare
Jose Lacal, founder and chief vision officer of OpenPHI’s HealthAlbum, raised an interesting point during his presentation last week at SugarCon that I think underscores one of the biggest advantages with open source. In a nutshell, Lacal presented his vision for using SugarCRM to revolutionize one of the largest and most difficult sectors to conduct … Continue reading »
Larry and Marc – Reunited, and it feels so Good (at $75 a share?)
Just saw on TechCrunch that Salesforce.com might be shopping itself to Oracle for $75 per share. Hmmm… On the one hand, this deal seems excessive – a 50% premium? But as I’ve seen inSaaS M&A in the past – a 5 or even 10x earnings number is common for an offer price. So, we are … Continue reading »
Wow…just, Wow.
I can not get over how well SugarCon went last week. Really. The speakers, the great interactions I had with attendees…all rolled up with the chance to play a little music with my mates…good stuff. However, it made me realize that while we sell software that makes managing the customer experience easier – it is … Continue reading »
San Jose Airport, U.S. Airways, and Why CRM 2.0 is Important
I had a customer experience Saturday morning while flying back to New York from SugarCon 2008 that highlighted the lessons of one our keynote speakers. Exhausted from lack of sleep and spending one too many a night out on the town with colleagues I only get to see on a quarterly basis, I awoke late. … Continue reading »
