This was a pretty interesting article about on-demand trailblazer, Marc Benioff and Salesforce.com.

"If Salesforce.com is right, you won’t be buying software in a box for very much longer"

The end of software as we know it? That’s what Salesforce.com is
proposing when it launches its customer relationship management (CRM)
suite in native Thai next month.

Salesforce is a pioneer of
the Software as a Service (SAAS) concept, where software is provided
over the network on a subscription basis. It also offers a platform and
channel for developers to write software via the Salesforce
AppExchange.

For users, this means access to world-class CRM services and
other business solutions through any web browser - and even on a mobile
device, whether its Windows Mobile, Palm or Blackberry - without having
to install software on the local PC and without having to set up and
maintain servers and worry about security and upgrades.

It will also allow smaller organisations that cannot afford
their own data centre the same solutions as their corporate cousins,
and enable start-ups to have almost "instant" enterprise-class
infrastructure.

For developers, it means a whole new way of developing shared
services on a new platform: AppExchange. Not only will they be able to
write once and run anywhere through any web-enabled PC, phone or other
device, they will be able to take advantage of being able to tap into
any of Salesforce.com’s existing 22,700 customers and take advantage of
an existing worldwide footprint, scalable data centres and payment
channels.

For the competition, it means that software as we know it is
nearing its end and that the future will be software as a service,
delivered on a per-seat or per transaction paradigm and an end to the
notion of packaged software that needs to be installed, customised,
maintained and updated.

Speaking in an interview in Singapore, Salesforce.com
president and CEO Marc Benioff explained how he believed, more than
ever before, that the IT industry is at a tipping point. "Over the past
10 years, we have seen the rise of the consumer web with Google,
Yahoo!, eBay, iTunes and technologies such as AJAX, blogs and mashups.
We have to ask a simple question - why can’t business applications be
as easy as the consumer web? Why can I run my life with Amazon and
eBay, but why can’t I run my business as easily?"

Benioff later demonstrated a few mashups, one of which was a
Google Maps integration that showed Salesforce.com customer data
geographically. Another was a mashup with Skype that allowed him to
check the boxes of who he would like to call and press the Skype
button.

More subtle was the Writely online word processor mashup. It
appeared to users as Writely running on the AppExchange tab, but the
important thing was that Writely was now storing data not on their
servers, but the Salesforce.com servers. This allows others to access
the data and collaborate and also to ensure the data is backed up and
stored in accordance with the 99.9 to 99.99% service levels that
Salesforce now achieves.

Developers in the Asia-Pacific region also stand to benefit,
as Salesforce will offer its development platform free of charge to any
university that asks for it. Since their data centres are designed for
US time zone peak traffic, it means that during the daytime here, most
of the systems lie idle - ideal for Asian developers to actually
develop and test new AppExchange applications.

A development incubator is planned for Singapore, though
Benioff said that if the Royal Thai Government is interested in having
one, it should give Steve Russell, Salesforce.com’s vice president for
the region, a call.

AppExchange has been soliciting programmers for only one year
but has been live for customers to use for only six months. Already
they have over 300 applications from 200 independent developers. Their
first DreamForce developers’ conference will be held on October 8-10
this year.

Steve Russell added that the response from his visits to
Thailand had been very positive, with many Thai developers now working
not just on translation of the core Salesforce.com applications but
also on the AppExchange, so much so that they had decided to bring
forward the launch of the Thai language edition by one generation.

Benioff claims the Salesforce.com platform is robust enough to
withstand the patchy connectivity we have here in Asia. Indeed, the UN
World Food Programme now uses Salesforce for the coordination of donors
and aid. It can also make use of its offline laptop version, which
communicates updates to the system in batches whenever an agent manages
to get patchy, often dial-up connectivity.

Benioff dismissed views that software as a service was fit
only for the low-to medium end of the market, pointing out that Cisco,
one of the world’s largest technology companies, has standardised on
Salesforce.com. Other customers included Merill Lynch, Symantec,
Datacraft.

Getting the banks and the security firms on board was
especially important as they often requested detailed information and
tours of the data centres before committing their customer data.
Benihoff said that while he cannot afford to give every single one of
Salesforce’s customers a tour, the fact that Merill Lynch and Symantec
are satisfied with the security of Salesforce’s systems should be
enough to satisfy most customers.

Benioff showed how the application could easily be customised
on both the front and back ends. For instance, the word "accounts"
could be replaced by "clients" or even "hospitals" for a company that
sells medical equipment to hospitals. Unlike customisations with SAP
and Oracle, because these are meta-customisations, they do not
interfere with upgrades and will persist when a new version of the
software is out.

So, unlike customers who are stuck on old versions of SAP for
years because they cannot afford the migration costs, new versions of
Salesforce come out a few times a year and everyone is automatically
using the latest version as there is no "upgrade" to be done.

On the other end, users can expose tables and records for
read-only access that can be used by business intelligence reporting
programs to integrate with other enterprise resource planning software.

So is this really the end of software as we know it? To this
question, Benioff asked, "Is the Internet just a fad or is it becoming
more powerful? Software as a service is just a web site and today we
have Google word processors (Writely), spreadsheets, graphics and email
(gmail). You don’t have to have a server in your company. You don’t
even have to have your own PC. It’s led to change."

He noted that even Microsoft has woken up to the winds of
change with its Live initiative and Ray Ozzie at the helm now saying
they are a service company.

Benioff often shows off not Salesforce.com, but Google’s
spreadsheet and Writely word processor - both web 2.0 applications that
run in a browser - to demonstrate the end of software. Not only does
this mean that software no longer needs to be bought, installed and
maintained, it also means an end to the versioning nightmare that
happens when a single document or spreadsheet is sent to many people to
edit and comment on. Because there is only one version - the one
running on the servers - it means people can collaborate in real time.

Benioff’s love for Google extends beyond just its services but
to his idea of corporate philanthropy. "They have also adopted our
1-1-1 model which means 1% of our equity is put into a foundation, 1%
of our staff time is for paid volunteerism and 1% of our profits are
used for the community. We also offer our services completely free of
charge to any non-profit and we have over a thousand non-profits
worldwide currently using Salesforce.com," he noted.

He also said that customers were not really interested in
buzzwords but with what works, pointing to current terms such as SOA
(service oriented architecture). "Ultimately what matters is not SOA,
but whether the customer is successful. Are they able to integrate our
services with their systems? Is the implementation a success? Are they
happy? The most important thing to us is not SOA, SAAS or on-demand, it
is customer success and a happy customer tells their friends about us,"
he concluded.

Source: Bangkok Post

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