Mic check
Are my debaters standing by? We'll be starting promptly at 11am ET / 8am PT
Dennis Howlett
Yes
No
Phil Wainewright
The moderator has delivered a final verdict.
Are my debaters standing by? We'll be starting promptly at 11am ET / 8am PT
...And looking forward it
I am for Yes
I am for No
Salesforce's Dreamforce product announcements advanced the social business ball, but I wouldn't call them revolutionary. Is Salesforce reaching the maturation point where advances and enterprise bets will be more incremental? And does incremental mean Salesforce is treading water?
I am for Yes
This year's Dreamforce saw not just one but three significant new product announcements -- each of them with the potential to dominate a significant new category. These are not incremental bets, they're important new departures. Far from standing still, the company has done exactly what it needs to do to maintain its rapid growth trajectory by expanding its functional footprint into new opportunities.
I am for No
The company also has ongoing integration work with BuddyMedia, Radian6 and combining them with existing products and features. Do you think acquisitions and adding new services---Chatterbox for instance---will mean Salesforce.com becomes too thin?
Which is better - a broad set of app clouds with just enough functionality or fewer clouds with richer functionality? Salesforce can bet on the community filling in gaps but then what if they don't?
I am for Yes
You just asked if they're doing too little, now you say it's too much! One of Salesforce's most remarkable achievements has been to keep scaling its product and management teams in step with its growth and expansion. There are challenges integrating acquisitions, but Salesforce has a really strong management core and has constantly proven its ability to bring in new talent when it needs it.
I am for No
One of the notable items was Saleforce's Work.com (rebranded Rypple) effort. How do you see Salesforce's relationship with Workday evolving?
I don't see any appetite at SFdC for this kind of stuff. And yes, there are overlaps but SFdC is coming from a long way behind.
I am for Yes
Now that it's clear Work.com is primarily a performance management tool, we can see that there's little functional overlap with Workday -- and far more with long-term Salesforce partners such as Xactly and ADP. There's a direct attack on SuccessFactors' turf, too, which will erode trust with SAP (despite Salesforce having many SAP customers, including its keynote favourite Burberry).
Salesforce can't offer the deep, global transactional functionality that Workday has developed, so the two are a natural complement in cloud-first accounts. I think we'll see the two companies working closely to help each other.
I am for No
Marc Benioff has said repeatedly that the CMO will have the technology spending power. Do you agree? Why or why not?
They know that while the CMO may have budget that's not the same as spend. Getting SFA through the door is one thing but as you take on more solutions there comes a point when the CIO has to be brought on board as well. That's when the power balance can and often does shift.
I am for Yes
...that goes way beyond the marketing domain. From Benioff's perspective it looks true, but only because Salesforce is focussed on sales and marketing. Every aspect of business today has to be far more automated and far more connected than ever before, and all line-of-business executives are getting deeply involved in technology spending. So while I agree the CIO has a waning influence over that spend, I disagree that the challenge is coming merely from the CMO.
I am for No
What's your assessment of the Force.com platform, its potential growth and enterprise adoption?
Force.com is maturing rapidly as a platform. I'm seeing standalone apps that don't require any SFdC solutions in the landscape. That's pretty unique for what is primarily an app vendor.
I am for Yes
I understand the company is now emphasizing what it calls the 'Salesforce Platform', within which Force.com is just one component. The reason for this is that Force.com is closely tied into the company's application stack, whereas more recent additions including Heroku and Chatter are designed to work more widely. But it still remains true that these add-ons tend to follow the Salesforce application into an enterprise rather than leading it. Think of Force.com as the glue that keeps an enterprise stuck with Salesforce.
I am for No
What's your timetable for a technology overhaul at Salesforce? In other words, address the Salesforce technical debt issue and how will it impact customers?
This has been a discussion the last couple of years but so far very little has been said. However, some areas requiring critical performance enhancement have been addressed.
I am for Yes
...but there are some early decisions in its architecture that remain limiting factors. My sense is that the company feels it has no choice but to live with that technology debt while it focuses on bigger opportunities. How it impacts customers is that large, global businesses will not run their financials or other key transactional operations on the Salesforce platform because of those limitations. If Salesforce ever wants to penetrate those areas, it will have to fix its technical debt.
For the intervening time (at least a decade, I reckon) it can partner with Workday and others to plug the gap.
I am for No
And why?
He who controls identity controls the landscape.
I am for Yes
It's a hugely expanding market with no clear leader. Salesforce can leverage its brand recognition on the path to dominance.
I am for No
Right now it is only in a limited number of mostly English-speaking territories. Developing for non-English cultures will be a significant challenge.
I am for Yes
Salesforce has a history of not investing enough in markets where it is weak. It doesn't have a proven strategy for success in foreign markets. This could be its Achilles' heel.
I am for No
What rival is Salesforce's biggest threat among the established enterprise software giants? SAP? Oracle?
Many think that Oracle makes a natural foe but then its cloud offerings are a cobbled together melange of technologies that are sort of cloud but not quite.
I am for Yes
Microsoft has the biggest footprint and would be a threat if it could get its act together in CRM. But like SAP, it has too much invested in legacy on-premise assets that won't cut it in the digital age. You only have to look how far behind they are on marketing automation to see how little these two get it. As for Oracle, it will only become a threat through acquisition.
Frankly, part of the reason why Salesforce has such a rosy future ahead of it is because its rivals give it such a free ride.
Google could be a threat too were it not so incapable of acknowledging enterprise requirements.
I am for No
What are the hurdles and impact on Salesforce?
The handwavers will say 'yes' but as the Bluewolf and Appirio surveys show, it is still very early days. The better way to describe these styles of solution is 'collaboration' but then that's not cool and sexy - is it?
I am for Yes
My biggest bugbear with Salesforce is the way it harps on about social business -- as if business ever was about anything other than people relating to each other. It's stating the bleedin' obvious.
As I sat through the interminable Dreamforce keynote, listening to the seemingly astonishing revelation that 'business is social, work is social,' I was gritting my teeth, waiting for someone to get carried away with it all and opine that 'people are social, society is social'.
What is happening today is that we are discovering how to use technology to help us navigate better and faster through the social interactions that we always have engaged in, ever since prehistory. And of course enterprises will adopt that technology once they understand its value.
The danger for Salesforce (and indeed for everyone else trying to make headway with this) is that early adopters get blindsided by the hype -- by collecting Facebook 'likes' for example-- and miss what really matters.
I am for No
Is Salesforce becoming too dependent on big deals of $1 million plus?
...but it does have a very good strike team to put on the case. The problem is, that team cannot scale and so it has to poach sales resources from the Oracle/SAP/IBM's of this world. But to do that, SFdC better had a great comp plan in place.
I am for Yes
More and more of these larger deals are inevitable as it scales up its reach across the enterprise. Those deals have high sales overheads because of the type of focus required to close them, so they need to be big to turn a profit. There's nothing wrong with that, provided the company doesn't lose focus on the very different skills required to maintain the flow of smaller deals.
I am for No
What new markets and developments would you want to see out of Salesforce going forward? Why?
And -- while it's more vision than reality -- I'd like to see how this turns out because this is one area where there is the potential to wring significant value out of employees albeit in a win-win manner.
I am for Yes
The latest batch of new offerings will keep it busy for a while and I think Salesforce must now concentrate on refining what it's got rather than extending further. Although the flexibility and constant renewal of its platform makes it look good compared to conventional on-premise alternatives, there's still much more it can to do refine ease-of-use and connectivity.
Currently, Salesforce doesn't deliver value to a lot of smaller companies that don't have the resources to tailor the platform to their needs. I'd like to see it invest more in making it easy for small businesses to get started with Salesforce.
I am for No
Look for closing arguments from Dennis and Phil on Wednesday -- and check back Thursday as well for my final verdict.
Dennis Howlett
Phil Wainewright
Lawrence Dignan
The most interesting part of this debate was the ZDNet community's vote, which was basically split down the middle.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that this debate on Salesforce is a snapshot in time. Given that Salesforce is coming off what I'd call an incremental customer conference, the treading water argument is obvious.
Phil made his points well, as did Dennis. In the end, Phil won the argument that Salesforce is pushing the enterprise forward. However, a year from now this debate could look different. In other words, Salesforce may be at the beginning of a treading water phase, but it's too early to tell.
Phil wins by a very slim margin.
Posted by Lawrence Dignan