SalesforceWatch.com

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.

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.

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?

More Real Estate for Salesforce.com

According to the CoStar Group, Salesforce renewed 35,000 square feet and acquired 37,692 additional square feet at their One Market Plaza location.

They have also added over 31,000 square feet at 1 California Street which they will begin using in January.

This space grab will give Salesforce.com 300,000 square feet of space in San Francisco.

Dreamforce Press Releases are Flowing

I woke up to a flurry of Salesforce.com press releases in my inbox. A couple of note:

• Salesforce is expanding trust.salesforce.com to include security education and best practices. It is live here: http://trust.salesforce.com/security
• Updated stats on the AppExchange: 700th application live on the AppExchange; 34,000 application installs by more than 12,000 customers. Now over 100 industry-specific applications available; new vertical categories include: financial services, high tech and public sector. Check them out at the Industry Solutions Pavillion in the Expo Hall.
• Winter '08 announced. Two new application product lines featured: Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas. Salesforce Content leverages the Koral acquisition; Salesforce Ideas is based on CrispyNews. Both products will be available in limited release in Q4 of Salesforce's current fiscal year. General availability is slated for 2008. Promotional pricing for Salesforce Content is $25/user/month.

More releases are here.

Assets of Salesforce Partner "Upside Outcomes" For Sale

Gareth Davies, a friend of Salesforcewatch.com and owner of Upside Outcomes, has just announced on his blog that he is selling the assets of Upside Outcomes.  He has accepted a senior position with one of the big four in the UK.

The assets of Upside Outcomes would enhance your service offering by providing:

    * A ready made process for acquiring new leads
    * Proof of ability to provide service (pre-packaged ready-made software)
    * On-going license revenue to provide stability and enhance lumpy service work.

Read his full post here.  Congratulations on your new position Gareth and good luck!

Today's Google (Non)Announcement

As Gareth Davies writes on his "Where's the Upside?" blog, the Financial Times, among other media outlets, has broken today's Salesforce/Google annoucement ahead of the press conference scheduled for later today.

The yawner of a deal allows Salesforce customers to manager their Google Adwords campaigns within Salesforce.com.  Something they could already do as a result of the Keiden acquisition, no?

Gareth provides some interesting analysis, calling this a "Google Smokescreen".

It also appears that Salesforce's Team Edition has been renamed to Group Edition.  Does this mean these names are out?

Update: Here is Salesforce.com's official press release on the announcement.

Tommorrow's (Google) Announcement

As you've no doubt by now read, Salesforce is holding a press conference tomorrow, June 5th @ 12pm PDT to announce a strategic partnership with a "leading internet company based in the Bay Area."  Salesforce will be webcasting the event. You can read Michael Arrington's take, "Salesforce is Acquisition Bait" over at TechCrunch. Some highlights from Mike's post:

• Mike received an email from Salesforce.com asking for the email and IP address of the poster of this comment on his blog.
• "Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is known to be somewhat checked out, spending as much time as possible in Hawaii and letting his lieutenants run the day to day operations of the company."
• "Google wants Salesforce. Google Office fits perfectly with Salesforce CRM and App Exchange. Google can take all of it offline with Gears. And Salesforce can sell it with their existing sales team. And the timing is right - Benniof is signalling that he is ready to retire."

Read the rest of the post for Arrington's full analysis. I'll be at Salesforce's Philadelphia City Tour event tomorrow, I hope to catch the announcement on the webcast as long as the Hyatt's wi-fi is up to snuff.  Look me up and let's talk about Benioff being "checked out" (which I'm not buying).

Forbes' 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies

On Friday, Forbes released its annual list of the 25 fastest-growing tech stocks.

Our selection process: We require at least $25 million in sales, 10% annual sales growth for five consecutive years, profitability over the past 12 months and 10% estimated annual profit growth for the next three to five years. We exclude firms with significant legal problems or other open-ended liabilities and also consider accounting and corporate governance scores from Audit Integrity of Los Angeles in making our final cuts.

Salesforce.com hits this year's list at the number 3 spot.  Read the full article.

Salesforce coverage at Google Finance

(via Jamie )