Former White House CIO Vivek Kundra joins Salesforce as emerging markets EVP

Cloud services leader Salesforce has hired former U.S. chief information officer Vivek Kundra as its executive vice president of emerging markets, the company announced today.

Kundra made headlines as the federal government’s first-ever CIO when he was hired by the Obama administration in March 2009. While in his job, Kundra managed $80 billion in technology investments and instituted a 25-point plan to reform and restructure the government’s IT management. Kundra left his job in August … Continue Reading

Salesforce to acquire social enterprise player Rypple, re-name it ‘Successforce’

Cloud-based software giant Salesforce.com has agreed to buy performance management firm Rypple for an undisclosed sum, the two companies announced today.

Rypple dubs itself as a “cloud-based social performance management company.” Basically, it provides software designed to help managers improve employee performance through “social goals” and consistent feedback and recognition. It competes in an increasingly competitive (and essential) market for cloud-based human resource management services. Leading competitors include SuccessFactors, which enterprise giant SAP recently announced … Continue Reading

Salesforce reports $584M revenue in Q3, gearing up for $3B next year

Today, Salesforce announced its Q3 earnings, which included a record $584 in revenue — a 36 percent year-over-year increase.

The bulk of that money came from the company’s subscription and support services, which accounted for $549 million. The remainder of the company’s revenue came from its professional services and other sources, and totaled $35 million.

“Salesforce.com is the first enterprise cloud computing company to exceed a $2.3 billion annual revenue run rate,” said Salesforce chief … Continue Reading

Salesforce.com promotes EVP George Hu to COO post

Salesforce.com has elevated Executive Vice President George Hu to the role of chief operating officer, the company announced today.

Salesforce.com did not have a COO (in name at least) previously, which is a little peculiar for such a high-profile company. Hu will still report directly to larger-than-life Salesforce CEO and chairman Marc Benioff. (On a related note, Salesforce.com’s general manager and executive vice president Byron Sebastian will be speaking at CloudBeat 2011, VentureBeat’s upcoming cloud … Continue Reading

Benioff unplugged: Salesforce.com chief says CEOs who don’t change will face a Corporate Spring (video)

Everybody should see Marc Benioff live and unplugged. The chief executive of Salesforce.com gave an amusing keynote speech at the AME restaurant in San Francisco this week after getting booted out of Oracle OpenWorld 2011.

We caught his Q&A with reporters after the keynote and have shared the video below. Benioff’s off-the-cuff presentation is worth catching, since it was kind of overshadowed this week by a lot of other news.

Benioff got into a tiff … Continue Reading

Oracle’s Larry Ellison finally puts his head in the cloud

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on Wednesday finally announced that his company would take the plunge into public cloud computing with Oracle Public Cloud. He made the announcement on stage at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference.

Oracle’s emphasis for several years has been on powerful hardware and software solutions for data centers and enterprise customers. Ellison in the past decried true cloud solutions as “water vapor” and “idiocy.” But the company will soon provide infrastructure as a service … Continue Reading

Dylan’s Desk: Software is not eating the world

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week, I’m writing a column on business and technology called Dylan’s Desk, while Dean Takahashi is writing a column on video games called The DeanBeat. They are available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear on the VentureBeat website.

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Software is eating the world, storied venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently wrote — and from his perspective, it certainly looks like it. But that’s only part of the picture.

It’s … Continue Reading

Live from a restaurant: Marc Benioff’s Oracle OpenWorld keynote

Today Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com, warned everybody in the tech industry to embrace social networking and cloud computing or face obsolescence.

In a talk that was originally supposed to be a keynote at Oracle OpenWorld 2011, Benioff said, “Social tech is shaking our industry at the core. It’s our job to transform our own businesses with social power.”

Salesforce.com has made a big push to add social elements to its cloud-based customer relationship … Continue Reading

Oracle cancels Marc Benioff’s keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld

Just a day before the talk, Oracle canceled the keynote speech of competitor Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com. Benioff was scheduled to talk about cloud computing at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 conference on Wednesday morning.

But Benioff, in classic fiery fashion, has decided to hold his keynote speech anyway, inside a nearby restaurant.

“Oracle just canceled my keynote tomorrow,” he said in a statement. “But the show must go on! Everyone is welcome to … Continue Reading

Salesforce.com CEO: Chatter is an enterprise social network, but that’s just the start

One of Salesforce.com’s latest and most-touted features in its enterprise social network, Chatter, lets you bring in people from external businesses and customers, so they can participate in activity streams alongside your employees.

The ability to bring in outsiders into a secure network is just a small subset of the newest tools the company unveiled at its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Calif.

“When talking to customers, it’s obviously geared toward customer relationship management,” … Continue Reading

Salesforce.com tries to make cloud computing sexy at Dreamforce (photo gallery)

The term “Cloud” typically refers to the process of running a computer application on a powerful remote server that you can access through a web browser or client.

It’s really not a very sexy topic.

Well, don’t tell Salesforce.com that. The customer relationship management (CRM) software provider puts on a yearly conference in San Francisco called Dreamforce that gets more extravagant each subsequent year. As years go on, the conference is inching toward a more … Continue Reading

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff cheers on HP for fleeing PC industry

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff said Hewlett-Packard made the right call by getting out of the PC industry.

“HP threw their hat in the ring on PCs and said we’re out — why?” he said today at the Dreamforce 2011 conference in San Francisco, Calif. “It’s because smartphones and tablets are taking over. We recognize that incredible fact.”

HP recently decided to spin out its PC-building industry as the … Continue Reading

Salesforce.com adds chat, screen sharing and groups to Chatter

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Salesforce.com today unveiled a slew of new features for its enterprise social network, Chatter, including real-time chat, screen sharing and advanced groups.

Chatter Now is similar to Facebook’s own chat application. It lets members of a business’ social network on Chatter quickly open up a chat without having to leave the main site or a web browser. Chatter users can also invite Chatter users from separate organizations into limited … Continue Reading

Cloudwords launches native cloud translation with Salesforce execs’ help

Cloud-based translation startup Cloudwords on Wednesday formally announced a powerful new solution for speeding up localization called Translation Management Automation, or TMA.

Launched in mid-February by ex-Salesforce.com employees, Cloudwords helps small-to-midsize companies expand their global presence by finding them translation service that best match their needs. It provides lists of partnering translators who will translate various kinds of content, whether websites, marketing materials, customer requests or something else.

With a lot of translation-bidding services and … Continue Reading