Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff: ‘Many CEOs are afraid to get too personal’
Marc Benioff has been the reliably outspoken chief executive of Salesforce.com for 10 years. Salesforce was one of the pioneers of the software-as-a-service business model, where traditional software is replaced by a web-based application that customers pay for via subscription, and he trumpeted the model with… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com tackles scheduled downtime with its ‘five-minute upgrade’
No one likes it when their favorite online service goes down, even if it’s for scheduled maintenance or upgrades. That’s especially true when there’s money at stake, as it is for users of Salesforce.com’s sales or customer service software. So the company says it’s rolling… Continue Reading
Practice Fusion funnels electronic health records to BioReference Labs
Practice Fusion, a major provider of electronic health record services announced a partnership today with BioReference Laboratories — one of the largest full-service laboratories in the U.S. The Practice Fusion system will allow physicians at BioReference to easily view, add information to, and redistribute patients’… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com co-founder: No more scheduled downtime, maybe
Salesforce.com is one of the big evangelists for online software and cloud computing, and its co-founder Parker Harris said today the company is working to address a major concern with the cloud: Downtime.
Obviously, web users don’t like downtime — witness the uproar whenever Gmail or… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com brings better customer service to Twitter and the web
Salesforce.com just announced the the latest version of its web-focused customer service tool, the Service Cloud.
The central insight of the Service Cloud, as suggested by Senior Vice President of Product Management Alex Dayon when it launched in January, was that customer service has moved away… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com offers contact management for businesses of one
Salesforce.com already sells online customer relationship management (CRM) software to almost any size company, from giant corporations to small businesses. Now it’s announcing a product aimed at companies that are smaller still, with a simple contact management system for customers with just one or two… Continue Reading
Salesforce’s reseller program brings the middleman back into cloud computing
As the hype builds around cloud computing, questions are growing about how resellers of software — the so-called middlemen — will make money.
By delivering software in the Internet cloud (meaning over thousands and thousands of computer servers), companies like Google can more easily sell their… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com wants to host your business applications at Force.com Sites
Salesforce.com wants to make the development of business applications faster and easier with a new service called Force.com Sites, which is available as of today. To sweeten the deal, the San Francisco company is letting businesses build and host their first application for free.
Salesforce is… Continue Reading
Salesforce’s Summer 09 release lets companies collaborate to answer complaints
Salesforce.com has been unveiling some big additions to its customer relationship management software and related products, including a scaled-down mobile application called Mobile Lite and the Service Cloud, a tool for addressing customer service queries across the web. The details of its just-announced Summer 09… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com lets you answer customer complaints on Twitter
Most people on popular microblogging site Twitter (which just turned three) have probably seen customer service-type queries from other users — questions about how to make a product work, or complaints that it’s broken. I have even posted some complaints of my own. That’s one… Continue Reading
Appirio raises $10M to bring business into the cloud
Appirio, a startup that integrates online business applications and platforms, has raised $10 million in a third round of funding.
The San Mateo, Calif. company developed three of the seven bestselling applications in Salesforce.com’s AppExchange, including the No. 1 app, which synchronizes users’ calendars in Salesforce… Continue Reading
Tech scores in stimulus bill, Sirius XM prepares bankruptcy filing, Modu stages modular phone launch
Here’s the latest action:
Tech industry scores funding in stimulus package – Infrastructure spending includes $7 billion for expanding high-speed internet access, some $20 billion for building a so-called smart grid power network and $20 billion for digitizing health records. The New York Times has more.
Sirius… Continue Reading
Awareness launches “best practice” templates for social marketing
“Social media marketing” is one of those catchphrases that sets off every right-thinking person’s jargon alarm, but the concept of engaging customers directly and interactively is becoming increasingly important to brand survival. Dave Carter, founder and chief technology officer of a marketing company called Awareness,… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com tackles customer service with the Service Cloud
It’s time to inaugurate a new era of customer service in the Internet cloud, says Salesforce.com. To that end, it’s launching a new product called the Service Cloud.
Traditional customer service channels, such as a phone number or an email address, are increasingly cut off from… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com builds another bridge to Google’s cloud
Business software company Salesforce.com is moving forward with efforts to connect Force.com, its platform for business applications, with other Internet “clouds.” Just last month, the San Francisco company announced it would connect Force.com with Amazon Web Services; now it’s launching Force.com services for Google App… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com beats expectations in Q3
Salesforce.com, considered the standard bearer for the software-as-a-service business model, announced unexpectedly strong third-quarter earnings today.
Total revenue was $276.5 million — a 43 percent increase from the same period last year — and total income was 8 cents per share. Revenue and income beat out… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com on Microsoft: “They hate everybody”
Salesforce.com’s strategy can be boiled down to one word, according to chief executive Marc Benioff — love. Of course, Benioff was being a little tongue-in-cheek as he answered questions from analysts and reporters at today’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. But he was illustrating a… Continue Reading
Dreamforce: Salesforce.com adds Facebook, Amazon and Neil Young
As tech giants eye the cloud computing market, Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff made it clear that he intends to stay competitive. During his keynote speech today at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, he first discussed Force.com Sites, the service for hosting public-facing websites… Continue Reading
Ribbit adds landlines and instant messaging to your Salesforce account
Ribbit, the web phone company recently acquired by BT, continues to tie together many of your communication tools with the release of Ribbit for Salesforce 2.0, which adds compatibility with landline phones, Google Talk and Skype.
Calling itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” Mountain View, Calif.-based… Continue Reading
Salesforce.com’s cloud footprint grows with Force.com Sites
Salesforce.com wants to become an even big player in the cloud computing market with a new service called Force.com Sites, which allows companies to host public-facing web applications in the Force.com platform. That means Salesforce — nominally a maker of customer relationship management (CRM) software,… Continue Reading