Mumboe CEO Bill Kane will be on stage at the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) OnDemand Conference tomorrow, Nov. 18th in San Jose, California as part of OnDemand’s showcase of early-stage companies that provide Software as a Service solutions. The format: a five-minute presentation on Mumboe’s application and business model to attendees, which include ISVs, platform vendors, systems integrators, venture capitalists and other bankers, analysts, press and other influencers in the SaaS market. The presentation will be followed by a 30-minute networking session. If you’re planning on attending the conference, be sure to stop by and say hello!
November 17th, 2008
Author: admin
We attended Dreamforce in part because Mumboe is a Salesforce.com customer, but more because we are in the process of evaluating the idea of becoming part of the AppExchange, Salesforce.com’s universe of third-party application providers. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff spent a lot of time making the case for developers to build their apps on Force.com, the company’s own development platform. But it’s unclear whether non-native apps will enjoy the same advantages as native apps (those built on the Force.com platform) in the future, one reason Mumboe is hesitating. Clearly there are advantages for the vendors on AppExchange, not the least of which is instant exposure to the company’s million plus users. But we don’t want to limit Mumboe’s availability to only SFDC customers. There has been a lot of talk on the blogs about native apps vs. ISVs on AppExchange. Readers, any ideas on the subject? Email me or leave your comments here.
November 10th, 2008
Author: Bill
More than 9,000 people attended Dreamforce last week, a mix of Salesforce.com customers, partners and vendors, as well as press and analysts. To see a crowd of that magnitude all gathered to learn about the latest developments in SaaS was nothing short of impressive. The production was over the top, with cloud graphics evoking the Cloud Computing theme racing across the ceiling and permeating every aspect of the conference. In this economic climate, it’s surely a testament to the growing power of the SaaS market to pull in so many folks from all over the world. CEO Marc Benioff asked customers who came from outside the country to stand up, and although it’s tough to judge what percentage of the crowd they were, it was significant.
The general sessions on both Monday and Tuesday included the usual procession of industry luminaries, including guest keynotes from Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook; Dave Girouard, President of Google’s Enterprise group; and Michael Dell, whose curiously irrelevant and blatant pitch for Dell products sent the otherwise engaged audience members streaming from the room.
And of course, no lavish customer conference would be complete without its celebrity appearances, and this was no exception. The Foo Fighters played at the reception on Monday night, and rocker Neil Young made an appearance onstage to talk about his LincVolt, a 1959 Mark IV Lincoln Continental that Young has spent $100,000 converting to run on a hybrid electric/natural gas engine.
The Foo Fighters
Marc Benioff and Neil Young show off Young’s LincVolt car.
Some of the more notable presentations included:
Salesforce.com and Facebook: for all us that have been trying to figure out how to leverage Facebook for business, the new partnership between these two is a welcome announcement. The partnership will allow Salesforce.com developers to integrate Faceblook’s social media capabilities into their applications.
Salesforce.com and Google: The companies continue to expand the integration between SFDC and Google’s suite of productivity apps, including Google Docs, Calendar and Gmail, among others. According to Benioff, more than 5,000 salesforce.com customers are using Google Apps since the two companies announced their partnership in April 2008.
Force.com for Amazon Web Services: With Force.com for Amazon Web Services (AWS), enterprises, ISVs and developers can build powerful new business applications and run them entirely in the cloud, leveraging both the database, logic and user interface features of Force.com and the storage and compute capabilities of Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 services.
Overall it was a good conference, with lots of information to soak up, other vendors to meet and insights to be gained, and a fair dose of entertainment thrown in as well. I can’t begin to imagine the budget for an event like this, but I’m encouraged that so many folks found the topic of SaaS applications for the enterprise compelling enough to spend the time and money to attend.
November 10th, 2008
Author: Bill
