SINO — Social In Name Only

Doubtless you have heard of the social enterprise by now.  It is Marc Benioff’s leading salient in a world he is convinced needs his solution to modern business.  But you also know that, like many other trends, this one is a work in progress.  For every Kimberly-Clark, Burberry’s and NBC Universal there are, what?  Banks! [...]

Coming in 2012 or Not, Predictions for the New Year

There was an interesting article in the January 2012 edition of Vanity Fair a magazine I’ve come to enjoy though for many years regarded as another of those things my wife would like more than me.  But VF carries an interesting blend of current events and politics as well as the glossy pictures and stories [...]

Salesforce’s Pragmatism

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, has often said that tactics drive strategy at his company.  That’s the opposite of what we think of regarding how decisions should be made especially in big companies.  The image is often of high-level decisions being refined into finer grained activities until you have tactics.  Much of this is encoded [...]

2011 Say Bye-bye!

Every year around this time I write two columns one on the year that was and another on what I expect the new year to bring.  There is no methodology for this process and I believe this lack of method is important.  I take a blank screen and fill it up with what has been [...]

Is Salesforce Slowing Down?

I am not a financial analyst and I don’t even play one on TV.  Of course, judging by the last five years’ performance of those in the financial sector I’d say there is a serious dearth of such talent.  Of course, that doesn’t stop the sector from issuing reports and guidance about individual companies.  Heck, [...]

Cloudforce New York and the Rise of the Social Enterprise

I was sitting in the “blogpound” at Cloudforce New York, the seating area where Salesforce.com considerately places press, analysts and bloggers along with tables, power and Wi-Fi, when it dawned on me.  Despite all the articles, blogs and books (and Paul Greenberg’s ceaseless public speaking) dedicated to the social media phenomenon in CRM, we may [...]

Beyond Legacy ERP

There was a guest post on the Forbes Magazine blog last month that I can’t get out of my head: “For Enterprise IT, Time to Move Beyond SAP.” For the record, I am an ERP dilatant — I know about it but don’t follow it with the same passion that I follow CRM. And as far as SAP (NYSE: SAP) [...]

Oracle Buries the Lead

At his second and final keynote address to the 2011 Oracle OpenWorld user meeting, Larry Ellison finally gave the rabid software oriented audience something to savor. Throughout the week the Oracle CEO and his minions had spent large amounts of time telling us about hardware or some other aspect of the business leaving me and [...]

Benioff Speaks

When his part was over Marc Benioff could look back on a keynote that was fresh and interesting for OpenWorld but without a great deal of the controversy that had been expected.  There are definite differences between Benioff and Larry Ellison and their respective companies. Benioff preaches openness, cloud, social, mobile and other modern technologies [...]

#OOW11 WTF! Larry Cancels Marc, Oy…

WTF!  I’ve been writing, talking and meeting all day.  I thought I had the night off when this bombshell went off (it comes directly form Twitter): “RT @Benioff: Larry just cancelled my keynote tomorrow! Sorry #oow11! Join me @ St. Regis AME Restaurant at 10:30AM! The show must go on! Sorry Larry!” There are so [...]