Search results matching tag 'Solutions'

Kryptonite for the Force.com?

bjacaruso — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:59:00 GMT

Our survey last week was geared to answer the question, "What CRM system are you using?". The result of the survey answered that but it also opened a whole new line of questioning, that until now I had not considered at all.

But first let’s take a look at the results of the question...

The boring and obvious news is Salesforce.com was the number one CRM choice of the respondents. I take two things away from this; first the Salesforce crew recently added Twitter to the Salesforce repertoire, meaning there is a recent influx of Salesforce users on Twitter. Some of them are possibly filtering via TweetDeck on #CRM, thus biasing the results of this survey some. But, secondly Salesforce went from zero to a billion dollars in revenue in the last 10 years. Translation: there are a lot of Salesforce users out there!

The results, even if skewed a little are probably not that far from the truth. I can safely say that Salesforce.com is a widely popular CRM solution, quite arguably the number one choice, Twitter or not.

But the more interesting thing that came back in the survey results is the Sugar CRM number.

SUgar has made a serious showing in a random survey of Twitter users. Open source folks have always argued it is a viable alternative. And slowly but surely (according to this survey) they are making their presence known in the enterprise business space. All of this is not news and it takes no stretch of the imagination to see it. Open source intitiatives like Sugar are a sustainable and successful business idea.

Given the above, here is my new thought that may take a little "vision".

Recent noise from the real media has been centered on cloud computing. Rightly so, cloud computing is offering some real options for everyone, enterprise or not. Salesforce has been very vocal in its support of cloud computing. But here is the rub, Salesforce is a closed cloud, if you want to build a Force.com you must follow the rules as dictated by Salesforce. This strong showing by Sugar indicates that Salesforce and the other closed cloud vendors should take notice; open source is not going away. If Sugar can leverage what Salesforce is doing for cloud computing, it is possible that the future of hosted applications may not be on Benioff’s Force.com, but on someone’s open source platform. I am not suggesting for a second that Sugar is that platform, that remains to be seen.

But here is what I will say, a vendor that shows up with a cloud that allows development teams a choice of how to develop, allows the adoption of native intellectual property, provides the billing, metering and marketing services that a cloud like Salesforce has, could be a threat.

Amazon and Google are much closer to this than Salesforce would probably like to admit. Here developers can build and host on demand applications, and users can as they use them. The application vendors can build on their platform of choice, they can even use a preconfigured one. What they lack is a marketplace like Salesforce's AppExchange and Apples AppStore. But doesn’t that just mean that these tow mammoths decided to build it from the ground up, rather than from the application down?

Salesforce has a great head start in some obvious places and a very large and seemingly loyal user base in the business applications world. It’s difficult to imagine an infrastructure eco-system (Amazon) displacing an application vendor, gone platform vendor. But wait isn't a platform supplying infrastructure just another name for an application development environment? Amazon and Google are able to provide services that the database driven application called Force.com will never be able to supply. Amazon for instance has already offered up several different storage services. It may take a while, but soon someone is going to build a killer application on one of these clouds…

It could be an interesting next 2 to 3 years for us all.

This week's @Bjacaruso One Question Survey:

What are the profiles of the companies of the people using Twitter?

In other words when it comes to Twitter usage:

“Does Size Matter?”

Integration and Changing Your Oil

bjacaruso — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:03:00 GMT

Connecting music to a portable device is a data integration problem solved by a solution called an MP3 manager like iTunes. Connecting your photos in your camera to your computer is a data integration problem solved by a photo application such as iPhoto. Connecting your CRM software to your Accounting software is a data integration problem solved by…?

Here exists a common problem lacking sufficient affordable solutions. Many would have you think all integration problems are different than the previous two. Why? Because they are trying to sell you a tool to fix the problem rather than a solution that solves it.

We could sell you a software tool that for you to use, and / or we can attach a week of consulting, a month of development and an additional week of implementation to build a “solution,”. It’s the same thing selling you a wrench, a bucket, 6 cans of oil and calling it an oil change. Let me clarify before all the software tool vendors go on their rants. There are problems that require the more painful approaches. Not every integration problem is a candidate, but some are common enough that they can and should be packaged. Using the oil change analogy, you can probably change your oil, you would need help to overhaul your engine. Call an expert when required.

We are providing data integration solutions that solve common integration problems. Solutions like QuickBooks to salesforce.com, QuickBooks to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Salesforce Data Replication. We will be working on new solutions all the time, whether business or consumer oriented. They will be self service, they will be prepackaged, they will be affordable.

QuickBooks Integration

bjacaruso — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:27:00 GMT

The list of providers able to deliver reliable and a reasonably priced QuickBooks integration has changed over the last year or two. The team at Pervasive DataSolutions has watched as new players enter and old players exit. Many entered this market with little appreciation for the complexity of delivering an integration that connects your QuickBooks to your other business applications, focusing instead on market buzz words and in some cases leveraging technology that just does not fit. Through it all our Pervasive DataSynch for Salesforce, Pervasive DataSynch for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Pervasive Integrated Credit Card solutions have begun to set the standard in terms of both performance and value.

With our latest addition, Pervasive DataSynch On-Demand, a fully hosted solution for QuickBooks Online, we start a new chapter in QuickBooks integrations. Undoubtedly you will see others enter this market, some have already attempted to deliver a similar solution, but as the story unfolds Pervasive DataSolutions will set the pace for the others to follow. From our 20 plus years experience in the integration products market, to our Intuit certified development team, the Pervasive DataSolutions team is committed to bringing you the best and most affordable QuickBooks Integration available.