Yesterday at Dreamforce, it was all about Salesforce Chatter. Today, CEO Marc Benioff took some time to tell us about Force.com’s progress, and it’s pretty impressive. Benioff lamented the fact that companies like Oracle charge annual maintenance fees for the kinds of services offered by Force.com, and it seems people agree: there are currently more than 135,000 custom applications built with Force.com, and more than 200,000 programmers in its developer network. And starting at $25 per user per month, and offering speedy development timelines, it’s plain to see why so many are clamoring for Force.com.

Development on Force.com is cheaper for companies because their programmers don’t have to test their applications against multiple combinations of databases, servers, etc. Furthermore, users are Salesforce.com customers, and therefore need not invest in hardware. Some note that it is potentially difficult to export applications built there to other platforms, but even large software vendors are taking note of Force.com’s popularity, particularly IT management companies (the larger of which have been a bit hesitant to begin the shift to the cloud).

IT management software company CA announced at Dreamforce today that they will be releasing a Force.com-built system, CA Agile Planner, which is for managing responsive software developments. More specifically, the product will allow programmers to develop various increments of applications to provide for continual feedback. CA’s CEO, John Swainson, even called Force.com’s growth “nothing short of amazing.”

Another IT management company proudly joining in is BMC: today they announced their Service Desk Express will be available via the Force.com platform in the spring of 2010. Service Desk Express will be sold, marketed, and available via Salesforce.com, and BMC execs are saying this will allow more IT departments to take advantage of the technology. BMC’s CEO, Bob Beauchamp, lauded cloud computing’s ability to “abstract all complexity of the infrastructure that rely on IT services delivery and follow best practices.” And while Beauchamp didn’t divulge any pricing details, he did add that serving IT management via the cloud would help their customers cut costs; it will also likely please their current customers, and companies everywhere are reevaluating any costly legacy systems they have.

Though NetSuite’s iPhone application was officially announced two weeks ago, it has been available at the iTunes App Store for about a month, and in that time has been downloaded over 1,000 times and received positive reviews.

The application is targeted at salespeople and managers, and has been praised for its user interface—even customizations made to a user’s desktop NetSuite account will translate. Currently, the biggest issue with the app is that it is only for viewing and not for editing—users can accept and decline events, but lead data and other information cannot be added via mobile. To allow editing capabilities, businesses with on-premise ERP and CRM solutions need middleware to synchronize data added by mobile with their backend servers. This synchronization is currently unavailable for the iPhone app. However, it’s worth noting that NetSuite already has mobile applications for the BlackBerry and Google-based smartphones that do have this functionality, so the editing issue will probably be resolved when the next edition is released.

Synchronization headaches aside, the app is fast becoming an asset to NetSuite, and is the first SaaS ERP application for the iPhone. In addition, its release and reception indicate the iPhone is getting more widespread use within the business world.

Maximizer Executive Explains Why “Laptops are Old School”

Earlier this month, Maximizer CRM submitted a video on YouTube, called “Laptops are Old School”, to promote their mobile CRM product.  I found this video to be clever, hilarious, and a “must-see” – and apparently, thousands of other viewers had the same response.  I interviewed Angie Hirata, Worldwide Director of Marketing and Business Development for Maximizer, about the popular video and Maximizer’s mobile CRM product.  Read more »

From CRM Daily.com, April 18,2008

NetSuite OneWorld, is a cloud computing solution which enables multi-national and multi-subsidiary companies to manage their global business operations in real-time.

NetSuite OneWorld is the first CRM company to announced an on-demand system that delivers real-time subsidiary management and business consolidation capabilities to mid-market companies for front-office , back-office and ecommerce operations. Prior to NetSuite OneWorld, only large enterprise companies with very deep pockets could approach such levels of business integration.

Bruce Richardson, Chief Research Officer of AMR Research calls NetSuite OneWorld a “bold move.”

“NetSuite is the first company to deliver a real-time multi-company, multi-national business system built on a Software as a Service platform that gives mid-market companies local and global visibility across front office and back office operations in real-time. This is a bold move.”

NetSuite OneWorld is available as a simple add-on capability to NetSuite for $1,999 per month.

NetSuite Introduces NetSuite OneWorld >>>

From SearchCRM.com, June 11, 2008

Sales Prospector, an on-demand sales collaboration tool from Oracle, is the latest of a number of social CRM applications Oracle has been demonstrating at events like OpenWorld and Collaborate.

“While CRM applications have traditionally been designed for management and reporting, the new applications will serve the sales end user, said Mark Woollen, vice president of CRM product strategy at Oracle. That requires a shift in the historical approach of Oracle.

Industry analytsts are asking if Oracle a traditional “top down” enterprise application company can shift to a “bottom up” technology.  

“They’re trying to change,” said Sheryl Kingstone, director of customer-centric strategies for Boston-based Yankee Group. “Oracle has in the past been one of those behemoths. Now they own so much of the market they’re trying to reinvigorate. They’ve really bought into the Web.”

Can Oracle be Social with CRM? >>>