Monday, December 08, 2008
Force.com for Google App Engine: Apps "Native" to a Cloud Community
2. Force.com checkout is a natural extension of Salesforce's strategy to encourage "Native" Apps. Salesforce rightly argues that there’s something unique about applications that run entirely on Force.com. Force.com is a powerful, trusted platform, and there’s a confidence that customers can have in applications that rely on that technology. That’s why Appirio has built dozens of custom applications for our customers entirely on Force.com, offers several 100% native apps, and strives to have all of our products that interact with Salesforce run native functionality.
Here's the power of the Salesforce platform strategy: Salesforce customers can now have the best of both worlds. Salesforce is combining the strengths of multiple, complementary, on-demand platforms, delivered through applications that customers can trust.
- Force.com excels at modeling business processes, workflow and UI
- Google excels at scalable, consumer-focused applications that extend its strengths in communication, collaboration, search, and advertising
- Amazon excels at highly scalable low-level computing power and storage
- Facebook excels at viral applications that leverage a user’s social graph and its community of 120M+ participants
Labels: Amazon Web Services, AppExchange, Cloud Computing, facebook, Force.com, Google, Google Apps, Microsoft Azure, On Demand, PaaS, SaaS, salesforce.com
Monday, November 03, 2008
Narinder Singh
In today's keynote and as reported recently, salesforce.com released the capability to create and run web based apps available to those outside of your company. There were a ton of cool demonstrations shown today and we built many of them (Harrah's, Facebook). We'll highlight those in our Dreamforce Central Blog, but we want to focus on a more subtle point - the rate of innovation and the pace at which it impacts customers.
1. The high rate of innovation of salesforce.com (and other cloud providers) - Two years ago it was Apex code, that allowed real business logic; last year it was Visual Force, that allowed full control over the user experience; this year they announce salesforce sites; allowing you take your apps and expose part or all of them to web users. No enterprise software vendor has come close to matching this pace over the same period of time.
2. The rate at which innovations actually impact customers - In typical on-premise software, even cool new things will require a generation to get into the hands of customers. Already 11 million of Apex Code and more than 50,000 Visual Force pages have been written by salesforce.com customers. We have used both with more than 50 enterprise customers in mission critical apps.
The fact that these two factors can occur while reducing overall IT costs at first glance seems like black magic. But this is in fact the ultimate testament to how different cloud computing is from old world and how far Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and others have to come. You can get started with trying out salesforce and getting started with a trial of all of this in 60 seconds.
How long will it take the others to match that? We have always been fans of cloud computing, but even I sit back stunned at how far the gap is between the old world and the new
Labels: Amazon Web Services, facebook, Force.com, harrah's, salesforce.com
Friday, October 31, 2008
The Time for Choice Approaches
Narinder Singh
Next week will be an important one in deciding our collective future. The impact of our choices next week on businesses will be fundamental. The Economist described that "the current economic malaise will increase the pressure on companies to become more efficient. More has to be done with less...it will also profoundly change the way people work".
The election? No-- Dreamforce, of course! The run up of announcements from Amazon, Rackspace, and now Microsoft; as well as the recent explosion of press and analyst coverage (including a 14 page article in the print version of the Economist ) have more than whet the appetite for the main event. Dreamforce, a celebration of success of the on-demand model and a foreshadowing of the future of SaaS, PaaS, Cloud Computing, is arguably the premier industry event (and the Foo Fighters are playing).
They say that the necessity is the mother of invention. So with an economy in turmoil and technology more important to businesses than ever, the prerequisites have been met. There is growing sense across leaders in the industry that traditional enterprise software is the new mainframe - a legacy that must be overcome or minimally partitioned off. In Microsoft's own announcements, Ray Ozzie passionately described, "Its (cloud computing) a transformation of our strategy." He then went on to acknowledge that the fire of innovation was driven by others: "I'd like to tip my hat to Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Across the industry, all of us will stand on their shoulders."
Whether they can become true agents of change, or if Microsoft Azure will suffer the same fate as SAP and Oracle's lackluster cloud computing strategies remains to be seen. Regardless of which outcome you predict (we think Chevron or BP just as likely to lead the green revolution) the fact is that even Microsoft is admitting the game has completely changed.
So now we come to Dreamforce - it's like the season premier for a new age in the industry (think Lost meets 24 plus American Idol) . Salesforce.com has been the pioneer in this space for the last nine years. What will they do next? We'll just say that it will be a combination of high impact innovations - the importance of which will be most appreciated by those already on the journey to the cloud. We also expect a few ripples in time to provide a glimpse of the future. Its fitting that Malcom Gladwell, the author of "Tipping Point" is one of the keynote speakers. Because we are experiencing one right now.
For those who will be there, and those that can't, we have the guide to helping you get the most out of these important moments in the history of enterprise computing - Appirio's own Dreamforce Central. Get the insiders view of whats happening on the ground at the conference - live blogs and insider commentary, twitters , instant pictures from the floor , a crazy server art exhibit , the private event for industry luminaries and much more. Whether you are in San Francisco and want the "backstage pass" or you're remote and looking to get more than just the announcements, this will be your Hitchhikers Guide to Dreamforce .
If you are coming, come see us in one of 20+ sessions Appirio and our customers are presenting in and come by our booth (#487). Mention that the blog brought you there and get ready for your own special gift....
---What's the image above all about? Find out now!---
Labels: Amazon Web Services, appirio, Dreamforce, Force.com, salesforce.com
