Salesforce.com expands call center support
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SEPTEMBER 29, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Hosted CRM evangelist Salesforce.com Inc. began a new branding campaign this week to draw attention to its customer service support functionality, launching a new Web
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com October 7, 2004, 3:22 PM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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Business Ready Customer Care plan includes a major support upgrade and new financing for the Dynamics applications.
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Microsoft announced this week Business Ready Customer Care, an initiative that includes major enhancements to its maintenance and support program for Microsoft Dynamics, ERP and CRM applications.
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With its eye firmly fixed on rival Salesforce.com, Siebel unveiled OnDemand Release 6 of its hosted CRM suite of applications last week, the first industry-specific version of its hosted software.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) specialist Salesforce.com is adding customization features to its hosted suite as well as increasing its reliance on partners to develop complementary applications.
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(InfoWorld) - Google and Salesforce.com will announce a partnership on Tuesday, a source close to the company in Europe said Thursday. Salesforce.com has scheduled an online news conference on Tuesday at 11 a.m. GMT at which Lindsey Armstrong, co-president of the company's operations in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region, will make a "strategic announcement." The source said it is safe enough to assume that the announcement concerns Google. In the U.S., Salesforce.com has said that it will make an announcement with "a leading Internet company based in the Bay Area" first thing on Tuesday. A Salesforce.com U.S. spokesman reached on Thursday declined to comment on the identity of the Internet company. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 21 that Google and Salesforce.com wereÂ holding talksÂ over a possible alliance that could see the two companies bundle Web-based applications. Both vendors declined to comment on the report. Google and Salesforce.com have each been rapidly expanding the online services they offer. Google has dramatically widened its scope from being a leading Internet search engine to encompass an ever-increasing range of other online services including desktop applications. Eight-year-old Salesforce.com has its roots as a hosted provider of CRM (customer relationship management), but has its sights set on becoming a platforms vendor using its AppExchange Web site, which it is in the process of fully commercializing as an online software marketplace. "We're a catalyst for change," Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, told financial analysts earlier this month. "Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo inspire us. We want to duplicate what they do in the consumer world." He added that to his mind Salesforce.com was effectively "building an on-demand operating system." Benioff positioned Salesforce.com as still very much focused on growth. "We're just trying to get to a billion dollars in on-demand [software] before anyone else does," he said. "We're willing to do anything." At the same time, Microsoft, a prime competitor of Google in the search and Internet advertising arenas, is marshalling its own set of Windows Live online services, including a hosted version of its Dynamics CRM software. The Journal report suggested that Google and Salesforce.comÂ need to buddy up to take on MicrosoftÂ and avoid competing with each other. Teaming up could involve integrating Google's Apps suite with Salesforce.com's hosted CRM. The two companies have previously worked together around Google's Search Appliance and AdWords. There's also the possibility that the relationship might become much closer with Google potentially looking to acquire Salesforce.com at some point. Â ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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This integration enables a Salesforce.com customer to integrate and use StrikeIron's CRM-related Web services without having to leave their Salesforce.com account. &quot;By utilizing our Web Services Business Network, Salesforce.com users can be assured of the reliability and security required for their applications.&quot; said Richard Holcomb, CEO of StrikeIron.
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InfoWorld - Hosted CRM service provider Salesforce.com took another step forward last week in its strategy to build an online ecosystem of vendors that offer software as a service.
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Salesforce.com Inc. ,  which has been working with Google Inc.  to make its  Web-based software applications meld with Google's own software  push, said on Tuesday it is enabling its customers to sell  Google advertising through Salesforce business software.
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The success of Facebook's Web-app building tools hasn't gone unnoticed by Salesforce.com, which on Friday announced a new platform for building on-demand business software that it hopes will lead to an "explosion" of applications.
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Benioff resists Office 2.0 distraction Salesforce.com wants to be many things to all people. But a move into hosted office productivity apps won't be appearing on its agenda anytime soon.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Everyone knows Salesforce.com as the company that pioneered SaaS (software as a service) and survived the dot-com bust when many other ASPs didn't. Now, Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff says the company is ready to take on MicrosoftÂ as a leading development platform provider, a strategy he unveiled as "Salesforce.com 2.0" in New York on Tuesday. Promoting its hosted application infrastructure as a platform for application development is not a new strategy for Salesforce.com, but the company seems to be turning up the volume on the message. At Tuesday's event, Benioff unveiledÂ a new hosted application called Wealth Management EditionÂ for the financial services industry and an increase in users from 5,000 to 25,000 at customer Merrill Lynch. But he also used the event to vigorously promote the company's transition from an ASP to a hosted application platform for partners. As the company approaches its eighth anniversary next month, Benioff said it's important that Salesforce.com think about achieving its first-decade goals over the next two years. Becoming a hosted platform for other ISVs -- many of whom don't have the financial resources to build applications on their own -- is at the top of the list, he said. "That's very much what we're doing today when we talk about Salesforce 2.0," he said. "Our vision started with our killer applications -- a whole new way to deliver enterprise software. Next we had very successful customers ... [then] it moved to the developer community to add on to that, and then it really got into a platform to give our customers and developers the ability to extend these products and create new products on the same infrastructure." Benioff described how Salesforce.com set up a collocation facility in San Mateo, California, for companies that need application infrastructure. There are 32 ISVs in the facility now with a waiting list for when the company expands the project, he said. This kind of facility, combined with the ability for ISVs to build applications on Salesforce.com's Apex platform for free will drive the company's success as a platform provider, Benioff said. ISVs will be able to post those applications on Salesforce.com's AppExchange directory and sell them on its AppStore. The transition from being a straight SaaS provider to having all these new offerings can be confusing, said Laura Lederman, an analyst with William Blair & Co. in Chicago. Pulling it all together as a cohesive platform under the Salesforce.com 2.0 moniker should spur wider understanding and adoption by customers, she said. Moving into the platform space will put Salesforce.com directly in the path of its favorite nemesis, Microsoft. Benioff, outspoken as usual, said Microsoft's model of still requiring customers to install their own software instead of hosting it on the Web is "really screwed up." He said he tried to update his computer to Windows Vista but was unsuccessful because it was too complicated. Benioff also insisted Salesforce.com has no desire to compete with its partners -- something for which Microsoft has been criticized -- even as it ventures into the vertical hosted applications space. "We want to foster competition on the AppExchange," he said. "If we build a [customer] recruiting application, we want other people to do that, too. We want the best [applications] to rise to the top."
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A small, Silicon Valley-based start-up with an AT&T heritage is now working side-by-side big partners such as Salesforce.com and Adobe in an effort to revolutionize voice calls as we know them today.
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Talisma recently released Version 6.0 of its multichannel CRM suite, updating its base for managing customer relationship basics, including SFA, marketing, and customer service interactions.
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Salesforce.com definitely knows how to sell its solutions.
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InfoWorld - Next Monday, Salesforce.com will, in the words of one industry analyst, &quot;extend the value proposition of software as a service&quot; when it introduces Visualforce at its Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco.