ISVs Snub Salesforce's Force.com Platform
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ZDNet blogger (and Procullux Ventures founding director) Phil Wainewright hosted a panel discussion Thursday at the OpSource SaaS Summit here in San Francisco that shed some very interesting light on Salesforce.com's platform strategy. Actually, almost shocking insight to a reporter who has covered Force.com primarily from the Salesforce user/developer and partner angle--people whom I've tracked down at conferences and over the phone to talk about their experience with Apex, with Force.com, and with Salesforce.com who have, by and large, seemed pretty excited about the platform. But I digress. Back to the SaaS Summit. The panel, titled "Platform Choices Will Define On-Demand Opportunity," included folks from WebEx, Salesforce.com, Adobe, IBM Venture Capital Group and Oracle (a terrific mix, by the way). At the end of the panel discussion, Wainewright walked out into the audience of about 250 ISVs and conducted a bit of a straw poll. He asked by a show of hands how many people are considering building their own SAAS applications (using their own development tools) and having it hosted by someone else. About 30 or 40 hands went up by Wainewright's count. I thought there were more. He asked how many people are interested in software plus services. About 10 hands went up. Then Wainewright asked how many people intend to use Salesforce.com's Force.com platform to build and deploy their applications. "About two hands went up, and they were undecided," announced Wainewright. "Ariel [Kelman, senior director of Salesforce.com Platform Product Marketing], you still have some work to do to explain that this is an option." During an interview with Treb Ryan, the CEO of OpSource--both a partner and a competitor with Salesforce.com on the platform front, though OpSource shies away from the platform designation--I asked Ryan what he thought about the lack of response, or even enthusiasm, for Force.com. "I think Force.com is fantastic," said Ryan. "Enterprises are going to build a lot of things on Force.com because it's great. I do think ISVs are going to want to continue to integrate with Force.com because it's such a valuable customer base, but very few will choose to make that their platform of choice. Hey listen, you can integrate with Force.com, NetSuite, Microsoft; this is not an either/or situation. Secondly, you have to make a bet on Salesforce.com. Why not make a bet on Salesforce by integrating with them, but leave your options open in case platforms merge, right? That's why we have an open environment. You don't have to pick one over the other." |
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Comments (2)
I can't speak for other ISV's, but my company has built a superior enterprise risk management product in 6 months. We lay claim to having the most stable and secure technology in the risk management market. And security is of the utmost of importance for our clients. Force.com delivers that in a way that no start-up can ever lay claim to.
I guess it was easy for me to understand the value of Force.com, as the first software company I started, built its own infrastructure from the ground up. After millions of dollars and several years, that management team is still distracted with the day-to-day operations and challenges of running an infrastructure. In contrast, my company is entirely focused on delivering value to our market.
At the same time, I understand the hesitancy of putting all of your eggs in the Force.com basket. My company is totally dependant on that platform. While we have options to do something different, they are not without significant cost and risk. All I can say, that when you start a new venture, the risk of market timing, successfully selling and marketing your product and building an infrastructure is far greater than the risk of depending on a single platform.
Bob Morrell
CEO
Riskonnect
Posted by Bob Morrell | March 1, 2008 11:30 AM
I can't speak for other ISV's, but my company has built a superior enterprise risk management product in 6 months. We lay claim to having the most stable and secure technology in the risk management market. And security is of the utmost of importance for our clients. Force.com delivers that in a way that no start-up can ever lay claim to.
I guess it was easy for me to understand the value of Force.com, as the first software company I started, built its own infrastructure from the ground up. After millions of dollars and several years, that management team is still distracted with the day-to-day operations and challenges of running an infrastructure. In contrast, my company is entirely focused on delivering value to our market.
At the same time, I understand the hesitancy of putting all of your eggs in the Force.com basket. My company is totally dependant on that platform. While we have options to do something different, they are not without significant cost and risk. All I can say, that when you start a new venture, the risk of market timing, successfully selling and marketing your product and building an infrastructure is far greater than the risk of depending on a single platform.
Bob Morrell
CEO
Riskonnect
Posted by Bob Morrell | March 1, 2008 8:40 PM