Comments on: Cloud Platforms – What’s Going On?

By: James Governor’s Monkchips » Amazon Web Services: an instance of weakness as strength

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:20:02 +0000

[...] Watson from Microsoft alludes to the dynamics I am describing here. I think the key takeaways would be that Amazon has built some very cool technology and they [...]

By: Brandon Watson

Brandon Watson — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:10:04 +0000

The good action always happens in the comments. I was oversimplifying the position on SFDC, and you are correct in that you can get many interesting, non-CRM apps for their platform. However, in the context of the all up cloud story, I just (personal opinion) don’t see them as a long term player. They need to spend a little more time pondering the complexities of a 4.7% net income margin. Most software companies aren’t comfortable operating in that region.

By: Eric Stahl

Eric Stahl — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:54:56 +0000

I respectfully disagree (and don’t want to hijack your blog into a salesforce.com sales pitch). That said, we sell CRM apps but we also have partners who build and sell apps on our platform for everything like financials, inventory management, risk management, contract management, recruiting, etc. We also have tools for any of our customers to build any custom app that needs a relational database, workflow rules, a sharing framework, UI, mobile, etc. Many of these apps have nothing to do with CRM.

By: Brandon Watson

Brandon Watson — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:14:05 +0000

Yeah, in the context of this discussion, SFDC doesn’t really fit. They are a SaaS provider of a vertical solution with an interesting and innovative way for apps to be built and deployed to customers of that app. Long term, the requirement of the proprietary language and the closed garden nature of their app ecosystem is going to be an issue.

By: Eric Stahl

Eric Stahl — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:52:38 +0000

All good points, although many include salesforce.com as a key cloud player these days- for both apps and our platform for building and running custom apps. As a side note, I just wrapped up this video on Cloud Computing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms&fmt=22

By: PicoBusiness » Cloud Computing Somewhat Simplified

PicoBusiness » Cloud Computing Somewhat Simplified — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:03:04 +0000

[...] is a pretty good explanation of cloud computing, although you still need some technical background to understand [...]