SalesforceWatch.com

Salesforce Down!!

Receiving multiple reports of Salesforce App and web properties down!

Salesforce User Community 3.0

Just got this note from Pete Fife, a long-time salesforce.com community advocate and wanted to pass it along:

Do you wonder if Salesforce.com listens to their customers and what they want from the user community? Take it from me, they do even if it takes a little squeaking to get their ear. Join me, Pete Fife, to discuss taking the Salesforce.com community beyond disucssion boards and into the new world of social community. I started the customer salesforce user groups back in 2003 and although we have come a long way since then, there is a long way to go to really enable us customers to define our own vision of the Salesforce.com Community. Take advantage of the chance to bring our collective wishes for the user community to the ears of Salesforce.com. They are our captive audience and ready to listen.

Join the Facebook group Salesforce User Community 3.0 to stay up to date and find out when and were we'll meet at Dreamforce: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26018154108

SaaS Event in Philadelphia

For those in the Philadelphia regional area, this SaaS event that my new employer, CRM manager, is hosting in conjunction with the Eastern Technology Council, may be of interest to you.

The event, titled, "New Rules for Software: From On-Premise to On-Demand", will be held on Wednesday, September 24 in Malvern, PA.

Panelists include:

Bobby Napiltonia: SVP, Worldwide Channels and Alliances, salesforce.com
Rishi Chandra: Product Manager for Google Enterprise, Google

For more information and to register, visit the Eastern Technology Council's website.

Salesforce 2nd Qtr 2009 Earnings Call

Today Salesforce announced that its 2nd quarter '09 earnings call will take place on Wednesday, August 20th at 5:00pm EST. You can listen on the web at: http://www.salesforce.com/investor or dial in at 866-901-SFDC.

Salesforce's official press release is here.

Today's Google/Salesforce Announcement: Google Data API Toolkit

At today's Tour de Force event in Santa Clara, Salesforce and Google will be announcing the new Google Data API Toolkit for Salesforce.

From the Salesforce developer wiki:

The new Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs makes it easy to develop Force.com applications that make the most of the capabilities of Google Data APIs, including read and write access to data and content in Google Apps.

You can read all the details on the wiki.

TechCrunchIT liveblogged the event - you can read it here (along with interviews with Marc Benioff and Vic Gundotra).

(via dschach)

Additional coverage:
Salesforce.com's official press release
gokubi.com: Salesforce makes it easier to code to Google Apps
force.com blog: Connecting the Clouds - Introducing the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs
force.com blog: Announcement of Google Data APIs on Force.com
Official Google data APIs Blog: Salesforce.com Releases Google Data Toolkit for Apex developers
CNET News: Marc Benioff's mantra: Anything but Microsoft
VentureBeat: Salesforce and Google take their partnership a step further with new APIs

Reminder: Benioff Keynotes Santa Clara Tour de Force on June 23rd

This is just a friendly reminder that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will be keynoting the Tour de Force event taking place Monday the 23rd in Santa Clara.

For a full agenda or to register, visit Salesforce's Tour de Force site.

Based on his interview with Robert Scoble earlier this week, as well as other sources, Benioff will be announcing another Salesforce/Google partnership; likely a platform type play.

Listen to the keynote live, online at 1pm EST on Monday!

Robert Scoble's Interview with Marc Benioff

Scott Hemmeter's early morning tweet alerted to me to the fact that Scoble posted Tuesday's interview with Marc Beinoff on the FastCompany.tv site.

The interview is titled, "Salesforce.com to Become Platform Juggernaut, Says CEO".

Scoble twittered about the interview saying:

There was some news sorta hidden in the Salesforce.com interview. On Monday they are gonna announce a platform deal with Google.

Track the Twitter reaction to the video here.

Adam Gross Keynotes eBay Developer Conference

Earlier this week, Adam Gross, Salesforce.com's VP of Platform and Developer Marketing, gave a keynote at eBay's Developer Conference on "the importance of platform-as-a-service to the ecommerce industry."

In an interview with AuctionBytes after the keynote, Gross commented on eBay's announcement of Project Echo which will allow third party developers to integrate applications directly into eBay.

I'm still looking for audio or video of the keynote and will update here if I find it.

Robert Scoble Visits Salesforce.com

Armed with his Nokia N95 and Qik, uber-web 2.0 technology blogger and video-blogger Robert Scoble visited Salesforce.com headquarters yesterday and interviewed Marc Benioff and others.

I'm guessing his interview with Benioff (which sounds like it was done with a "real" video camera) will be up shortly on his FastCompany.TV site.

In the meantime, however, you can watch his cell phone video interview with Kraig Swensrud, VP of Applications, where they talk about Salesforce and Google:

Or, this one with Ariel Kelman from the Product Platform Marketing group where they discuss the Force.com platform:

Ribbit Giving Away Trip for Two to Napa

Salesforce.com partner Ribbit, is giving away a trip for two to Napa Valley in its Dreamforce-inspired Dream in Napa sweepstakes.

Ribbit's product, Ribbit for Salesforce, integrates your mobile phone and Salesforce.com.  Features include receiving voice messages along with text transcriptions right in your Salesforce.com instance. Watch a demo video here.

If you sign-up for their free 30 day trial you are automatically entered into the drawing.  The winner will receive:

• A weekend stay in a five-star Napa hotel
• Car Rental for 3 days
• $500 Amex Gift Card

Read complete sweepstakes details.

CRO Magazine: Beinoff CEO of the Year

CRO Magazine announced today that Marc Benioff has won it's 2008 CEO of the Year (Middle Market) award.  He will receive the award later this month at the CRO Conference is San Francisco.

"As 2008 CEO of the Year, salesforce.com's Marc Benioff represents the ideal combination of leadership in corporate responsibility and financial performance," says CRO Magazine Publisher Jay Whitehead. "He has consistently demonstrated that a company can deliver stellar results to Wall Street while remaining committed to a 1/1/1 Model program to benefit the communities in which it resides.

Read the full press release.

NJ Transit "Ideas" Site Live (Beta)

Yesterday, NJ Transit launched their Salesforce Ideas site called, "riders platform".

The site is definitely in beta as there are a number of limitations -- I had to wait to have my registration approved before getting a username and password.  Additionally, there are no comments and all ideas are reviewed by NJ Transit before posting. I'd rethink that one if I were you guys - it may be beta, but let's not create additional hurdles here (the registration process is painful enough).

I'm sure I spoke for those of us in the Northeast Corridor when I say I hope they see enough usage during the beta period (reported to be a month) to move forward.

Benioff's Berkeley Commencement Address (2007)

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff delivered the commencement address yesterday for Berkeley MBA students.

Mea Culpa: This is from last year's commencement (2007)! Thanks anonymous!

Summer '08 Release Notes

Thanks to Steven Andersen (gokubi.com) and my Twitter addiction, I just learned that the Summer '08 Release Notes are now available.

Steve highlights some functionality over at his blog.

And, as I was typing this, the Summer '08 preview page went live at the Successforce site.  NOTE: None of the links are working yet.

Update: Links are working!

Benioff on CNBC

Marc Benioff made an appearance (fresh haircut?) on CNBC this morning to discuss the Salesforce/Google announcement with CNBC's Melissa Francis.

And, since CNBC does not allow the video to be embedded, you'll have to go check it out on their site directly.

Melissa pushes him on Google acquisition rumors to which he answers (on the second try), "...as a public company CEO, I can't comment on rumors of acquisition."

Salesforce for Google Apps

As many expected, today Salesforce has announced the launch of "Salesforce for Google Apps". The embargo was lifted at midnight and Mashable! and Techcrunch appeared to be first out of the gate with their coverage.

The new product is available immediately to existing Salesforce customers (get started here) and includes tight integration with Gmail, Gtalk, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

You can watch the announcement live at 3pm EST today.

A flurry of tweets in the Twitterverse.....

A video demo from Salesforce is after the jump:

Continue reading "Salesforce for Google Apps"

Summer '08 Release

All signs are pointing to summer...  the Salesforce Summer '08 release that is.

Keep your eye on this URL for Ideas tagged "comming_in_summer_08". (RSS feed)

The usual logo contest has been running for a couple of weeks on the IdeaExchange. (I voted for the Orange Cremecicle)

According to a conversation overheard at the Philly City Tour, the pre-release should be available for sign-up in a few weeks.

Benioff vs. Plattner

Last night, Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff and SAP's Hasso Plattner debated the future of enterprise software at a Churchill Club event at the Computer History museum in Mountain View, California.

Salesforce has audio from the event archived at their investor site.

CNET's Dan Farber has a good analysis on his Outside the Lines blog; he gives the win to Benioff.

(Thanks to those who wrote in with this one.)

Bonus Time

In a Form 8-K filed yesterday, Salesforce published its cash bonuses to named executive officers. Here's who got what:

Marc Benioff: $0
Steve Cakebread: $262,500 (the best paid Salesforce admin I know)
Kenneth Juster: $175,000
Jim Steele: $262,500

Additionally, the following mid-year bonuses were paid on September 28, 2007:

Steve Cakebread: $67,500
Kenneth Juster: $45,000
Jim Steele: $67,500

Read the full filling.

Benioff Making Annoucement Next Month; also driving to work, eating lunch and picking up dry cleaning

On Tuesday, Salesforce invited analysts to hear CEO Marc Benioff speak on April 14th.

According to the invitation, "Marc Benioff will be hosting a special event and making some important annoucements..."

As Adam points out, should make for some interesting fodder between now and then.

Starbucks Using the Force

Salesforce has another Fortune 500 company using the Ideas application to power their "customer suggestion" portal.

Starbucks has started promoting the "my Starbucks Idea" site on their homepage - the site is running at force.com with a custom url (mystarbucksidea.force.com).

The site has a clean look and feel and they appear to already have a good number of ideas and comments.

First Starbucks drops breakfast sandwiches, now they launch Ideas, what's next - losing the tip jar? :)

Jeff Jarvis has highlighted some of the more interesting ideas at his blog.

Check out the site.

(via Jeff Jarvis)

Benioff Meets with Cisco

Tom Foremski follows up last month's Oracle/Salesforce post with this bit about Salesforce and Cisco:

A senior source close to Cisco, said that Mr Benioff was summoned as a direct result of my post. One of his meetings was with executives of Webex, a software as a service (SAAS) company acquired by Cisco last year for $3.2bn in cash.

Read his take.

CNET Interviews Benioff

CNET's Dan Farber and Charles Cooper interview Marc Benioff for their Newsmakers feature.

"CNET News.com caught up with Benioff to talk about the future of software services as well as his plans to re-create Software.com as more of a computing platform."

A couple highlights:

Benioff on MSFT: I think Microsoft is still a dinosaur

Benioff on platform as a service: It's taken about a decade of Salesforce to kind of get the software service movement to really happen. We will be 10 years old on March 8 of next year. People overestimate what you can do in a year and they underestimate what you can do in a decade, unless you're (Apple CEO) Steve Jobs.

Benioff on online productivity applications: Those are not technologies that we want to create. We have our hands full in terms of doing our core areas.

Read the full interview.

No, Salesforce.com Doesn't Have Anything to Worry About

That is my answer to Erick Schonfeld's [rhetorical] question posted this morning, Zoho People Launches for Free. Does Salesforce.com Have Anything to Worry About?, on TechCrunch.

While the Zoho suite of apps may be fine for personal use or even small-business use, Salesforce's bread-and-butter customers are not going to be taking their multi-hundred or multi-thousand seat installations that are most likely integrated with other legacy systems and migrating them to Zoho.

These customers expect a level of service, performance and trust that Salesforce has spent the past 9 years building and it's going to take a lot more than a free/$4 month service to move them.

Salesforce and Apple iPhone SDK

At today's Apple iPhone event, Salesforce's Chuck Dietrich, vice president of mobile, demos Salesforce.com functionality built natively on the iPhone using Apple's new developer SDK.

According to Dietrich, just one Salesforce developer ("Jason"), built the demo in two weeks. CNET TV has a video of the demonstration.

Reaction from the Twittersphere:

Dave Huston: boring salesforce.com app demo on iPhone
AceyTech: Salesforce.com demo, **yawn**
Craig Patchett: Salesforce.com demo. Nice-looking app, also put together in 2 weeks.
hikikomori: Maybe the Salesforce guys should have come on before Spore.

More Tour de Force Dates Announced

Salesforce has recently announced four more dates for their Tour de Force developer roadshow.

April 8: Atlanta
April 10: Chicago
April 16: New York (Benioff keynote)
April 22: Boston

Here's a video they posted on YouTube promoting the event:

Update: Here's Benioff's keynote from the San Francisco Tour de Force event:

Reminder: 4th Quarter and Fiscal 2008 Financial Results Tomorrow (2/27/08)

Just a reminder that Salesforce.com's Q4 and Fiscal 2008 earnings call will be held tomorrow, February 27, 2008 at 5:00pm EST.

Listen to the audio webcast or dial-in at:
Domestically – (866) 901-SFDC or (866) 901-7332
Internationally – (706) 902-1764
Passcode: salesforce.com or 34062469

Benioff at Adobe Engage 2008

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff spoke at today's Adobe Engage 2008, an invitation-only event on the future of applications and the web.  Adobe is launching new versions of AIR and Flex at the event and Salesforce announced the availability of the new Force.com toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex.

Uber-blogger Robert Scoble was at the event and using Qik, an application that can stream live video from your cell phone, he recorded Benioff's presentation (Salesforce's Steve Fisher was also part of the presentation).

You can catch an archive of the live stream on Scoble's Qik page:

Benioff at Abobe Engage: Part 1 (27 min.)
Benioff at Adobe Engage: Part 2 (4 min.)

More coverage:
Ben Galbraith's Blog: Salesforce
ZDNet.com: Marc Benioff on AIR (and Flex plus Flash)

Salesforce Party

Salesforce held a 70's themed private party last night at the Nob Hill Masonic Center and this Salesforce employee was smitten with one of the bartenders....

Salesforce External Storage Device Stolen from Vehicle

The Breach Blog is reporting that an unencrypted external storage device was stolen from a vehicle.

The device contains personal information on current and previous Salesforce.com employees. According to a breach notification sent to the New Hampshire State Attorney General's office, no customer data was stored on the stolen device.

As a precaution, Salesforce is providing 12-months of credit monitoring for employees at no charge.

Salesforce/Oracle Deal?

Silicon Valley Watcher's Tom Foremski is reporting that a reliable source tells him Salesforce.com has approached Oracle about a potential sale.

If you've had your fill of Microsoft/Yahoo news this week, read Tom's complete analysis.

More coverage:
TechCrunch: Salesforce Shopping Itself To Oracle For $75/Share
ZDNet: Salesforce pitching to Oracle at $75 a share
deal architect: salesforce.com in play?

Success Tours: Save the Date

The dates and locations for Salesforce's first quarter '08 success tours are out (Note: I updated the dates on Feb. 9th based on information from the Spring '08 partner briefing):

March 18: Houston, TX - JW Marriott
March 19: Denver, CO - Hyatt Regency Denver
April 1: Philadelphia, PA - Hyatt Regency Philadelphia
April 3: Santa Clara, CA - Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
April 8: Austin, TX - Hilton Austin
April 10: Huntington Beach, CA - Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach
April 15: Miami, FL - InterContinental Miami
April 17: Montreal, Canada - Hyatt Regency Montreal

Registration: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
Success Tour Sessions: 2:30pm - 5:00pm
Expo Networking Reception: 5:00pm - 6:30pm

Reminder: Spring '08 Release Starts This Weekend

Just a reminder that the Spring '08 release of Salesforce.com will start rolling out to customers this weekend.

NA0, NA1, NA5 - February 8th
NA2, NA3, NA4 - February 15th
EU0, AP0 - February 16th

For specific times, you can view the entire schedule at trust.salesforce.com.

Presidential Campaigns Using Campaignforce

Today, on the eve of Super Tuesday, Salesforce announced that almost 30 political campaigns and advocacy groups are using Campaignforce.

Campaignforce is a customized version of Salesforce.com created specifically for these groups. Some customers include the Ron Paul and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns, Senator John Kerry and Rep. Michael McCaul in Texas.

"Our vision is to replicate the same success that businesses have achieved using Internet technologies such as Facebook, YouTube and salesforce.com with how we run our campaign," said Justine Lam, online campaign manager, Ron Paul for President. "Salesforce has played an integral part in our Internet fundraising success and in harnessing the power of our volunteers around the country during the primaries."

Read the full press release.

WSJ Profiles Salesforce's Susan St. Ledger

In this weeks Wall Street Journal "How I Got Here" feature, the paper profiles Salesforce.com's Susan St. Ledger. St. Ledger is Senior vice president, High Tech and Manufacturing Vertical.

On her move from Sun to Salesforce.com:

Sun was an amazing company. I really had a fabulous experience there. I learned a ton. I really feel like they shaped my career. But I had been there 12-and-a-half years, and I felt like I wasn't growing at the same pace that I had been growing at earlier in my career. I had discussions with several mentors, and one of them asked what I really needed to round out my resume and take it to the next step. Timing was everything. I wasn't actively looking, but I had just started to think seriously about what a move might look like and at that point, I received a call from salesforce.com. When I got to know them better and saw their vision, it just completely blew me away. I couldn't resist the challenge.

Read the profile at WSJ.

Tag, You're It

The Salesforce.com User Experience Team has another call out for usability testers for January 30th and February 1st. The subject of this test is the "tag" feature of Salesforce.com. 

Buy Salesforce on Craigslist

Came across this firesale on Criagslist tonight:

"I am offering our salesforce CRM software. I have purchased the service and no longer need it, but it does everything! I paid $17,000+ for it and have a 1 year contract that I do not need anymore."

I'm guessing the folks in Legal would have something to say about this. From the MSA (emphasis mine):

Salesforce.com hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide right to use the Service, solely for your own internal business purposes, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. All rights not expressly granted to you are reserved by salesforce.com and its licensors.

Salesforce VP of Product Strategy Leaves for Cloud9 Analytics

Salesforce.com VP of product strategy, Per Brondum Jakobsen, has left the company for the on-demand sales analytics firm, Cloud9 Analytics, where he will be SVP of product management.

Prior to salesforce.com, Jakobsen managed product teams for several other Bay Area companies, including Sigaba, Ventaso and Onwire Technologies. He also spent ten years with Oracle where he ran product management for the tools division, designing a set of cross-platform UI report writers and report servers, and Developer/2000, Oracle's flagship development toolset.

Source: tmcnet

Tour de Force Kicks Off Today; Developer Announcements include Utility Pricing

Salesforce.com's Tour de Force Roadshow kicks off today in San Francisco. And along with it, come a slew of announcements aimed at developers, including a rebranding of the Apex Developer Network (ADN) to developer.force.com.

Packaged under the DaaS moniker (Development as a Service), the tools include:

Force.com Metadata API

Force.com IDE

Force.com Sandbox

Force.com Code Share

Utility Pricing for Force.com - "Force.com cloud (per login) pricing is now available. The list price is $5.00 per login with a maximum of 5 logins per user per month, and will be offered at a special promotional price of $0.99 per login now through the end of 2008. Customer must purchase 5 logins per named user which are good for one month. Force.com Cloud pricing is for occasional-use, widely-deployed apps and is available for platform use only and not for CRM applications."

And, the previous announcement that Apex is now available in Enterprise Edition.

Watch Adam Gross, VP, Platform Marketing, demo the new DaaS tools in this video on the Salesforce Developer Wiki.

Other coverage:
Between the Lines: Salesforce adds $5 per login pricing option and new developer tools
CenterNetworks: SalesForce Updates Force.com Platform and Offers New Pricing and $1 Million Developer Challenge
TechCrunch: Salesforce.com To Offer DaaS Service, New Pricing Model, Competition

New Design for Message Boards

As I mentioned the other night, the Salesforce community forums (including the Developer forums) have undergone a redesign.

While it's largely cosmetic -- a MUCH cleaner look, IMHO -- there is a new tagging feature that enables you to set a tag or tags on any forum post.

Additionally, there are a couple of tag widgets and a "My Subscriptions" widget on the main forum page.

Check it out.

Salesforce Usability Tests

According to recents posts on the User Experience Blog, the Salesforce.com User Experience Team is looking for participants for two usability tests next week.

Salesforce Administrators, week of January 14th
Salesforce Developers, Friday, January 18th

Keep your eye on the team's blog for more opportunities to participate.

Salesforce SVP Bails for Salesgenie.com

Today Salesgenie.com announced that Mark Israelsen, Salesforce.com's SVP of Global Professional Services,  joined the company as president.

Prior to joining Salesforce, Israelsen was Vice President of Global Alliances and Channels at Oracle.

Mr. Israelsen said, "It's a great honor to join Salesgenie.com and have the opportunity to build on its reputation as the leading provider of sales leads and mailing lists."

Spring '08 Details on Successforce

Looks like Salesforce just pushed out feature detail pages for the Spring '08 release onto the Successforce.com website.

Some features that are sure to interest:

Apex Code in Enterprise Edition (with new Apex Sandbox)
Sandbox to Production
Advanced Validation Rules
Apex Code Packaging
Outer Joins Reporting

UPDATE: The main Spring '08 release page is here. It includes the pre-release signup, detailed release notes, video tour and admin preview.

Spring '08 Roll-Out Starts Next Month

Users are starting to get notices from Salesforce regarding the roll-out of the Sping '08 release.

The maintenance windows for customers are:

NA1:  Friday, February 8th, 8pm PST - Saturday, February 9th, 2am PST
NA3:  Friday, February 15th, 8pm PST - Saturday, February 16th, 2am PST
NA4:  Friday, February 15th, 8pm PST - Saturday, February 16th, 2am PST
NA5:  Friday, February 8th, 8pm PST - Saturday, February 9th, 2am PST

If you are on a different instance and have received your upgrade email, leave me a comment with the dates and I'll update the post.

(Hat Tip: Bryan)

Spring is in the Air

"Coming in Spring 08" ideas are now by flagged by Saleseforce at the Ideas site.  There are two pages of new features at last count.

A couple of the more popular ideas included in this release include processing inbound email in Salesforce.com and scheduling dashboard refreshes.

Salesforce's Thomas Tobin has posted a helpful writeup about the dashboard refresh feature on the Reporting and Dashboards Blog.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Polly Sumner Joins Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com announced today that Polly Sumner is joining the firm as President, Platform, Alliances and Services.  She will report directly to Benioff and oversee "the technology and marketing for the company's Force.com platform, alliances with global independent software vendors and service partners, and salesforce.com's professional services organization."

Sumner worked at Oracle from 1987 to 1999 and was most recently President of Global Services for Telcordia.

According to this article on witi.com, Larry Ellison once described her as "the most aggressive man he's ever met."

Read the full press release.

Better Late Than Never

Those of you that attended Dreamforce '06 probably remember the Mac vs PC style "commercials" that were shown before the keynote. I had trouble finding them online until now (the beauty of RSS feeds).

So, here you are, 14 months late.

Oh, and Happy New Year too :)

Salesforce.com Million Customer Chocolate Bars

Based on this eBay auction, it looks like Salesforce presented its employees with 4 chocolate bars commemorating their 1,000,000 subscriber mark.

You can buy three of the bars described as "...sickly sweet, but decent for making cookies with..." from this employee.

In addition to the description of the chocolate bars, you'll find this gem:

It doesn't make up for the 10% of our bonus that HR cuts off without telling us because we didn't meet some alleged profit milestones set by who-knows.  Maybe you can help me buy that porche my manager promised me when I joined years and years ago.

Update: The chocolate bars went for $12.50 - what a bargain! Looks like the lucky winner is Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource. Phil Wainewright has additional coverage at ZDNet.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Salesforce held a Winter Wonderland party in Singapore yesterday at Bar Cocoon in Clarke Quay.  Check out a few photos on the Live!Studios blog.

Update: More photos here.

Salesforce Ideas - Limited Release

Salesforce Ideas will be in limited release beginning December 8th.  Launched as part of the recent Winter '08 edition of Salesforce.com, Ideas will be available to all editions except Group.

If you'd like to participate in the limited release, you need to contact your Account Executive.

Read the full post at Successforce.com.

Update: Salesforce's Jaime Grenney has posted a few demos for the Ideas product.

SaaS Event in Philadelphia

For those in the Philadelphia regional area, this SaaS event that my new employer, CRM manager, is hosting in conjunction with the Eastern Technology Council, may be of interest to you.

The event, titled, "New Rules for Software: From On-Premise to On-Demand", will be held on Wednesday, September 24 in Malvern, PA.

Panelists include:

Bobby Napiltonia: SVP, Worldwide Channels and Alliances, salesforce.com
Rishi Chandra: Product Manager for Google Enterprise, Google

For more information and to register, visit the Eastern Technology Council's website.

Salesforce 2nd Qtr 2009 Earnings Call

Today Salesforce announced that its 2nd quarter '09 earnings call will take place on Wednesday, August 20th at 5:00pm EST. You can listen on the web at: http://www.salesforce.com/investor or dial in at 866-901-SFDC.

Salesforce's official press release is here.

Today's Google/Salesforce Announcement: Google Data API Toolkit

At today's Tour de Force event in Santa Clara, Salesforce and Google will be announcing the new Google Data API Toolkit for Salesforce.

From the Salesforce developer wiki:

The new Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs makes it easy to develop Force.com applications that make the most of the capabilities of Google Data APIs, including read and write access to data and content in Google Apps.

You can read all the details on the wiki.

TechCrunchIT liveblogged the event - you can read it here (along with interviews with Marc Benioff and Vic Gundotra).

(via dschach)

Additional coverage:
Salesforce.com's official press release
gokubi.com: Salesforce makes it easier to code to Google Apps
force.com blog: Connecting the Clouds - Introducing the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs
force.com blog: Announcement of Google Data APIs on Force.com
Official Google data APIs Blog: Salesforce.com Releases Google Data Toolkit for Apex developers
CNET News: Marc Benioff's mantra: Anything but Microsoft
VentureBeat: Salesforce and Google take their partnership a step further with new APIs

Reminder: Benioff Keynotes Santa Clara Tour de Force on June 23rd

This is just a friendly reminder that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will be keynoting the Tour de Force event taking place Monday the 23rd in Santa Clara.

For a full agenda or to register, visit Salesforce's Tour de Force site.

Based on his interview with Robert Scoble earlier this week, as well as other sources, Benioff will be announcing another Salesforce/Google partnership; likely a platform type play.

Listen to the keynote live, online at 1pm EST on Monday!

Robert Scoble's Interview with Marc Benioff

Scott Hemmeter's early morning tweet alerted to me to the fact that Scoble posted Tuesday's interview with Marc Beinoff on the FastCompany.tv site.

The interview is titled, "Salesforce.com to Become Platform Juggernaut, Says CEO".

Scoble twittered about the interview saying:

There was some news sorta hidden in the Salesforce.com interview. On Monday they are gonna announce a platform deal with Google.

Track the Twitter reaction to the video here.

Adam Gross Keynotes eBay Developer Conference

Earlier this week, Adam Gross, Salesforce.com's VP of Platform and Developer Marketing, gave a keynote at eBay's Developer Conference on "the importance of platform-as-a-service to the ecommerce industry."

In an interview with AuctionBytes after the keynote, Gross commented on eBay's announcement of Project Echo which will allow third party developers to integrate applications directly into eBay.

I'm still looking for audio or video of the keynote and will update here if I find it.

Robert Scoble Visits Salesforce.com

Armed with his Nokia N95 and Qik, uber-web 2.0 technology blogger and video-blogger Robert Scoble visited Salesforce.com headquarters yesterday and interviewed Marc Benioff and others.

I'm guessing his interview with Benioff (which sounds like it was done with a "real" video camera) will be up shortly on his FastCompany.TV site.

In the meantime, however, you can watch his cell phone video interview with Kraig Swensrud, VP of Applications, where they talk about Salesforce and Google:

Or, this one with Ariel Kelman from the Product Platform Marketing group where they discuss the Force.com platform:

Ribbit Giving Away Trip for Two to Napa

Salesforce.com partner Ribbit, is giving away a trip for two to Napa Valley in its Dreamforce-inspired Dream in Napa sweepstakes.

Ribbit's product, Ribbit for Salesforce, integrates your mobile phone and Salesforce.com.  Features include receiving voice messages along with text transcriptions right in your Salesforce.com instance. Watch a demo video here.

If you sign-up for their free 30 day trial you are automatically entered into the drawing.  The winner will receive:

• A weekend stay in a five-star Napa hotel
• Car Rental for 3 days
• $500 Amex Gift Card

Read complete sweepstakes details.

CRO Magazine: Beinoff CEO of the Year

CRO Magazine announced today that Marc Benioff has won it's 2008 CEO of the Year (Middle Market) award.  He will receive the award later this month at the CRO Conference is San Francisco.

"As 2008 CEO of the Year, salesforce.com's Marc Benioff represents the ideal combination of leadership in corporate responsibility and financial performance," says CRO Magazine Publisher Jay Whitehead. "He has consistently demonstrated that a company can deliver stellar results to Wall Street while remaining committed to a 1/1/1 Model program to benefit the communities in which it resides.

Read the full press release.

NJ Transit "Ideas" Site Live (Beta)

Yesterday, NJ Transit launched their Salesforce Ideas site called, "riders platform".

The site is definitely in beta as there are a number of limitations -- I had to wait to have my registration approved before getting a username and password.  Additionally, there are no comments and all ideas are reviewed by NJ Transit before posting. I'd rethink that one if I were you guys - it may be beta, but let's not create additional hurdles here (the registration process is painful enough).

I'm sure I spoke for those of us in the Northeast Corridor when I say I hope they see enough usage during the beta period (reported to be a month) to move forward.

Benioff's Berkeley Commencement Address (2007)

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff delivered the commencement address yesterday for Berkeley MBA students.

Mea Culpa: This is from last year's commencement (2007)! Thanks anonymous!

Summer '08 Release Notes

Thanks to Steven Andersen (gokubi.com) and my Twitter addiction, I just learned that the Summer '08 Release Notes are now available.

Steve highlights some functionality over at his blog.

And, as I was typing this, the Summer '08 preview page went live at the Successforce site.  NOTE: None of the links are working yet.

Update: Links are working!

Benioff on CNBC

Marc Benioff made an appearance (fresh haircut?) on CNBC this morning to discuss the Salesforce/Google announcement with CNBC's Melissa Francis.

And, since CNBC does not allow the video to be embedded, you'll have to go check it out on their site directly.

Melissa pushes him on Google acquisition rumors to which he answers (on the second try), "...as a public company CEO, I can't comment on rumors of acquisition."

Salesforce for Google Apps

As many expected, today Salesforce has announced the launch of "Salesforce for Google Apps". The embargo was lifted at midnight and Mashable! and Techcrunch appeared to be first out of the gate with their coverage.

The new product is available immediately to existing Salesforce customers (get started here) and includes tight integration with Gmail, Gtalk, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

You can watch the announcement live at 3pm EST today.

A flurry of tweets in the Twitterverse.....

A video demo from Salesforce is after the jump:

Continue reading "Salesforce for Google Apps"

Summer '08 Release

All signs are pointing to summer...  the Salesforce Summer '08 release that is.

Keep your eye on this URL for Ideas tagged "comming_in_summer_08". (RSS feed)

The usual logo contest has been running for a couple of weeks on the IdeaExchange. (I voted for the Orange Cremecicle)

According to a conversation overheard at the Philly City Tour, the pre-release should be available for sign-up in a few weeks.