Platform Power
Thursday, February 15th 2007 | Ismael Ghalimi
Three months ago, I made the transition from Salesforce.com to SugarCRM, mainly as a way to learn what was available out there. I was extremely impressed by this open-source alternative, and described what I liked about it in details in last week’s CRM Roundup. Nevertheless, I decided to revert back to Salesforce.com, and completed my reverse migration today. Here is why.
Any good Office 2.0 setup, be it mine or yours, needs a focal point, a place where all the bits and pieces fall into place. And because no single solution will address all the requirements you might have, what you really need is a platform that can integrate multiple applications in a meaningful way. If your setup is made of simple widgets, something like web-based desktop might be all you need. But if you’re using a lot of transactional applications, and need something a lot more data-oriented and workflow-driven, a CRM system is what you should be looking for.
Problem is, building a platform is one of the most difficult things to do. We are building one at Intalio, so I know a thing or two about this kind of challenge. And what I learned from more than seven years of trials and errors is that your success as a platform vendor hinges on your ability to develop a thriving ecosystem of partners whose success is tied to yours. In Intalio’s case, it’s over 44 system integrators and 22 independent software vendors located in 21 countries. And in the case of Salesforce.com, it’s the AppExchange, with over 500 applications developed by over 240 partners. The larger your ecosystem, the stronger the platform. It’s that simple.
Today, many Office 2.0 vendors have embraced AppExchange and started to offer their services as extensions to Salesforce.com. Among them, there are a few I just cannot live without anymore: EchoSign for electronic document signing [review], Koral for content management [review], and Spanning Partners for data syndication and synchronization [review]. The desire to have these directly integrated within the hub of My Office 2.0 Setup is what convinced me to return to my first CRM love. Today, Salesforce.com has matured into a full-fledged platform, and it has become too difficult to ignore its appeal.
That being said, I want to make it crystal clear that after three months using SugarCRM extensively, I could not find anything missing from a pure CRM standpoint, and in many areas John Roberts’ company kept innovating where Salesforce.com had stopped. SugarCRM is certainly one of the best CRM systems out there for on-premise deployment, and the on-demand edition I have used has worked absolutely flawlessly. For this, I would like to thank the good folks at SugarCRM. I learned a lot from them and their application. But being the bleeding edge pioneer that I am, I need something that will help me build a more integrated Office 2.0 setup with minimal resources, and I think I will find it where I came from.
Note to Marc: you should really talk to the folks at ThinkFree.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0, SOA
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[…] Deep thinker Ismael Ghalimi has done insanely detailed and thoughtful… […]
Hi Ismael,
Interesting that you mention the platform concept. It’s hard to go more than a few hours these days without hearing about SaaS platforms or ecosystems. I’ve been keeping a close eye on these guys at Apprenda as they promise something truly revolutionary, and I’m looking forward to evaluate the platform myself.
I’d love to hear what you think of them.
Thanks
- Jorge
Jorge,
I’ve looked at them a month ago, signed up for the Beta, but have yet to heard back from them. They’re making bold claims, but I want to play with it before expressing any opinion. What they are after is not easy, so it will be interesting to see what they can pull off.
Best regards
-Ismael
Ismael,
I agree, I’ve signed up for their Beta, and I’m also waiting to hear back from them. I’ve contacted them, and I got to chat with Sinclair about their technology, and some of the things that it promises to do.
Unfortunately I haven’t seen a full demo, but I can’t wait to try it out, as our needs won’t be satisfied with what Salesforce.com offers, and Apprenda seems to offer what we are looking for. I’ll let you know once I get the real scoop.
Thanks for your thoughts
-Jorge
Jorge,
Thanks! Also, have you looked at Coghead?
It was interesting to me that you never mentioned price. Many Office 2.0 companies are trying to produce versions of X that is Y% cheaper (or free). Yet Salesforce.com is materially more expensive than Sugar, and I’m guessing you went with the Enterprise Edition. The value was enough that the price issue didn’t rise high enough to get mentioned in the piece…
Yes,
I’ve looked at Coghead in the past, but from my understanding they are more aligned with the do-it-yourself model, and not really focused on enterprise grade applications.
We are interested in building a true enterprise application to be delivered as a service, but are trying to avoid having to worry about the SaaS intricacies that some of the SaaS platform players promise to deliver (multi-tenancy, scalability, etc.).
Our biggest problem with Salesforce.com is vendor lock-in. Not only from the hosting perspective, but we would be required to develop the applications using their Apex language, which for us is unacceptable. We wouldn’t be able to take advantage of any of our in-house skills, and we would have to spend time and money training our developers on their language; not to mention that if we are not satisfied with their service for whatever reason, we would have to start writing the applications again from scratch, as the code would not be portable.
They definitely have a compelling product when it comes to CRM, but as far as their platform offering is concerned, we are not sold yet.
Thanks again
-Jorge
Jason,
You’re right, Salesforce.com is not exactly cheap, but they changed their pricing model a bit, and cheaper editions now support custom objects, which makes it a lot more competitive on that front. Also, I am using Salesforce.com as a single user. If I had to pay for more accounts, my decision might have been different. That being said, we are also using it at Intalio for 10 accounts, and we are planning on adding more later this year. Expensive, but worth every penny as far as I am concerned.
Best regards
-Ismael
Jorge,
You’re making some very valid points. I also was disappointed that Salesforce.com did not adopt a standard language such as Java, JavaScript, or PHP to build custom business logic. I believe that it would have made the platform a lot more attractive to many more developers.
Best regards
-Ismael
Jorge & Ismael,
History repeats itself. When a vendor grows to a critical mass, it believes that it can dictate what customers must do. IBM did it many times over in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. For instance, IBM sold its Federal Division and Vertical Market Segment Groups (Hospital, Petroleum, etc.) in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I met Account Representatives and System Engineers from several IBM groups over the years. They were so arrogant that they told their customers to go IBM’s way, or no way. The best example was a National Support SE from IBM telling a Telephone Switch Engineer that the telephone switches must comply with IBM’s SDLC, which is a proprietary protocol, not an ISO standard. It sounds like that Salesforce.com is travelling down the same route as IBM did. In other words, you use the APEX scripting language, or else… Your choice!
Best regards
-Francis
[…] Alternatives The most basic alternative to an online desktop is simply to use browser tabs, which allows you to open multiple applications all at once. Now that tabs are supported by Internet Explorer, this alternative is available to almost everybody. Another approach is to use what some call a web operating system, suchy as goowy or Zoho Virtual Office. Yet another is to use an online CRM application. As suggested in this previous article, a good CRM application such as Salesforce.com is a very powerful platform that can be used to integrate multiple online services in a data-oriented and workflow-driven way. Finally, if you’re looking for a simple way to aggregate multiple types of content, such as emails and feeds, a simple configuration of your email reader might do the trick—many Gmail users read their feeds directly from Gmail, instead of using a feed reader like Google Reader. […]
[…] What is more surprising is that access to 3rd party applications and services is limited to the premier edition. Personally, I think it’s a mistake. Google is trying to build a platform with Google Apps, and the success of a platform is measured by its adoption by developers of 3rd party applications, as discussed in this earlier article. Problem is, developers won’t adopt your platform if they cannot get access to a large community of users. This catch 22 is a very challenging one to get out of, and the only way to solve it is to lower all possible barriers to adoption. This is something that Marc Benioff at Salesforce.com understood very well, and the reason why all Salesforce.com users get access to the vast majority of applications currently offered on the AppExchange, irrespectively of the edition they subscribe to. My advice to Google would be the following: open up your platform to all developers and all users, and share some of your premier services, such as billing and user provisioning, with 3rd party developers. Doing so, you will encourage developers to adopt your platform, and you might even be able to get a cut of their business with your premier customers. […]
[…] Personal Favorites Currently, I am using Koral on a daily basis, and its integration with Salesforce.com was one of the primary motivations for migrating back to this platform. I am also using EchoSign for getting all my contract signed, and I am in the process of choosing between Blinksale and FreshBooks for managing all invoices related to the next edition of the Office 2.0 Conference. […]
[…] As mentioned in this past article, Salesforce.com is trying to build a platform, and as such must lower any possible barrier to adoption, especially when trying to get developers on board. Apex and AppSpace are directly targeted at developers, yet the pricing defined for AppSpace makes it look like its actually targeted at the business user who selected Salesforce.com at first place — a Vice President of Sales usually. This might work for Salesforce.com’s larger customers, but for smaller users like myself, it just does not. Note to Marc: please revise your pricing. […]
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
Leave a Comment