AnshuBlog

Site.com: Marketing at the Speed of Social

2012-03-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I am excited that we are launching Site.com – the only cloud-based web content management system (CMS) built ground up for the social enterprise. This has been a journey over the last few years for me to discover the challenges faced by marketers and their friends in IT who want nothing more than simple, easy to use tools to build, publish and manage their web presence.
We found that the tools available today were built in a slow changing world where you had only a website designed for access from desktop computers – before we had YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, iPads or iPhones. We found marketers struggling and frustrated with websites that take too long to change because of long IT backlogs and outdated systems, having to tackle increasingly complex technologies to do seemingly simple tasks like have consistent brand look and feel that can be applied across multiple pages without requiring coding.
There are simple, easy to use tools out there but they are primarily focused on very small websites and are not built to scale for enterprises. You are forced to choose between ease of use and enterprise features; between drag-and-drop simplicity and pixel-perfect control over look and feel; between low total cost of ownership and ability to scale. This is not working for the marketers. And, we reject this as a false choice.

Source of Quote: McKinsey

We set out to build a cloud CMS that rejected the status quo and the false choice of on-premise legacy systems. Site.com is a service that can meet the needs of marketers without undue burden on IT:

Enables you to build and iterate much faster
Allows you to respond to feedback from your customers who are increasingly telling us in real-time what they need through Twitter and Facebook
Delivers more than just a CMS – we included everything it takes to not only build but also run and scale a world-class website
Integrated with database and customer social profile
Allows marketers to simply drag and drop a form to capture leads, or surface relevant, fresh content to customers
Without requiring you to install software or manage servers
On a proven, trusted cloud infrastructure that has more than 30,000 websites, 100,000 customers and delivers more than 10 billion transactions per quarter
Delighting marketers of leading companies like HP, Häagen-Dazs and FICO

A simple, elegant cloud CMS that allows you to focus on what’s most important – delighting your customers as they interact with your brand.

Now, let me take you through the impact of social and mobile, the evolving CMO landscape, the changing role of CIO and how that translated into Site.com Cloud CMS.

Mobile changed everything. Social changed it again.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role is evolving in most companies – transformed by external factors like the explosion of social media from Facebook & Twitter to Youtube, and the move to mobile. This is a transformation as massive as the shift from print to radio to television. In the late 1990s companies scrambled to have an “e-business” strategy that usually comprised of building an internet website presence. In the last 10+ years, almost everything about so-called ‘websites’ has changed:

The Facebook Effect: People expect to talk to be able to follow and converse with not just friends but also their favorite brands, products and companies. When the first generation web content management products were built, neither Facebook nor Twitter existed.
The Post-PC Effect: Customers expect to be able to get the information they want or need on their favorite mobile devices and at blazing fast speeds.

These trends are fundamentally altering the expectations from not only for marketing leaders – from CMO to brand managers, product marketing managers and web marketing professionals but also for IT leaders – from CIO to website developers.

As marketing becomes more digital, social and mobile – they need more capabilities delivered more rapidly and often IT has a hard time keeping up with this pace of innovation. A recent Gartner study points out that by 2017, CMOs may have a larger technology spend than CIOs. In many cases, the CIOs are leading the charge by leading this new transformation while others are trying to keep pace – or as the report points out, in some cases marketing has decided to chart it’s on technology course.

We believe there is a better way and that convergence of cloud, social and mobile can not only enable CIOs to deliver the marketing technologies that CMOs need; we believe these transformations can only bear long-term fruit and deliver on the full promise of a ‘digital marketing platform’ when marketing and IT are a true partners.

We believe that this post-PC internet requires not just some additional features but a fundamental shift in both how you engage with customers and a modern architecture. The Web Content Management Systems (CMS) built for late 1990s are still powering most of the world’s websites – in the meantime, Steve Jobs created iPads and iPhones, the web is no longer just HTML and images but rich and interactive, consumers expect to be able to share content via social media and find out who else is saying what in real time, and to be able to find out about your products, services, promotions and events on Facebook.

The Evolving CMO Landscape

As we talk to more CMOs and marketers, it’s becoming evident that social & mobile present almost a perfect storm of challenges and opportunities. And marketing is no longer about a one way conversation, it’s about having the customer feel that you are truly listening and talking to them. Marketing now begins when you first hear about a product when your friend ‘likes’ it on Facebook to when you tweet your frustration with getting the product or service – and the response to that tweet.

Speed of Social: It used to be the case that you spend months planning a product launch, a new campaign – then a few months producing it and publishing it via print, web and other channels. That luxury is long gone. The cycle time for launches and updates is much shorter. To capture the fleeting attention of the customer, you need to have relevant & fresh content.
Radio is Dead: Radio and TV, as Seth Godin points out were a perfect medium for marketers – all you needed was enough marketing spend and you could get captive audience. This was true of the web too in early days when by having a www site and getting enough ‘eye balls’ you could promote your product or service. Now, customers expect to be talking to interact with the brand and they want this interaction to be “human” – treat them as individuals, personalized to meet their needs.
Every Employee is now in Marketing: In today’s world everyone in your company that touches or interacts with the customer from the email marketing campaign manager to the person responding to a trouble ticket over phone is in “marketing”.
Lifetime Value of a Relationship: Getting a customer to pay attention to you just before or during a transaction is no longer a recipe for success. We want products and companies we chose to do business with to get to know us, with our due permission, and use that customer relationship to offer us a superior service. The early iterations of customer relationship management focused less on building and sustaining a mutually rewarding relationship and more on tactics. It is important for my experience to be richer as a consumer when I give you the benefit of getting to know me as an individual.

Seth summarizes this eloquently – “The smart way to build a brand today is to invest in the elements of the platform... the product, the technology, the websites (plural) and the systems you need to make it easy for people to show up at your very own trade show.”

The Transformation of CIO Role

There is broad recognition of the fact that CIOs have a huge challenge – they are expected to participate in value creation through innovation but meanwhile majority of their IT budget is still going to keeping the legacy systems running. Leading innovation driven companies have already realized that every business is now a technology business and that CIO & IT are therefore core to not just ensuring execution but for growth. As Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape and now a venture capitalist and thought leader wrote in the Wall Street Journal article Why Software is Eating the World –“More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense.”

This transformation means you either transform your company into a company that knows how to leverage the technology shift or be prepared to be eaten by a smaller, nimbler competitor who can.
Marketing is one of the key functions that’s being – for lack of a better word – digitized. In a rush to meet the challenges outlined previously, marketing organizations have often taken the path of least resistance by picking point solutions that meet the need of a specific initiative or delegating the choice of technology to outsourced providers. This could a website needed to respond to a publicity crisis or new launch that couldn’t wait for IT to deliver who have way too many things on the backlog, or this could be building a Facebook page to engage with customers to hear their feedback or gather new ideas, or a simple email marketing campaign to existing customers. While these solutions often serve the immediate tactical needs, they are resulting in a ‘digital sprawl’ – with neither the CMO nor the CIO in control of this sprawl which has real business and technology implications including:

360 degree view is only 180 degree view of the customer – While often spending millions over the last decade to create so called 360 degree of customer, the digital sprawl means your customer interactions are happening in applications and platforms that are stove pipes. It’s hard to serve a customer if every touch point – the website, the Facebook page and the call center – has only a partial view of the customer.
Difficult to make business decisions – How do you effectively manage your digital spend – do you update your Facebook page to get 50,000 more Likes or followers or do you update your website to optimize for organic search traffic?
Social experiments can’t scale – Many CMOs and CIOs we speak to bemoan the fact that even when they find a particularly effective mechanism to drive more business value through say a Facebook page or an optimized website for say a product in a particular market, it’s hard to translate that experimental success to scale across other products, markets and channels. While very small businesses may be okay with the one hit wonders, it’s difficult for companies with more than 1 or 2 products to have a meaningful impact on topline unless the success can be replicated both from a technology and process perspective.

This is why we are seeing company after company make a move towards becoming a social enterprise powered by a modern, cloud based social enterprise platform. This encompasses multiple aspects from employee social networks to product and customer social networks built around a common social profile. Many IT leaders are fully aware of this transformation and are looking to partner with their marketing counterparts to curb the digital sprawl by not inhibiting innovation but by empowering them with a modern platform for engagement including managing their web presence across web, mobile and social.

Here are the key challenges IT encounters as it tries to leverage technology architected for the web as it looked a decade ago:

Time to Market: CMOs want to move at the speed of social – where customers expect realtime updates to content across channels. But older technology was built for a slow changing environment – not build once publish anywhere in real-time.
Unpredictable Scale: It’s a CMO’s dream to see a product launch campaign go viral. For many CIOs, it’s a nightmare – how many times do we read about customer facing websites crashing and turn a potential success story into a PR disaster.
TCO or TCC: In slower moving parts of the business, total cost of ownership is one of the key metrics for making an IT decision – and there is ample evidence to suggest that cloud applications and platforms have an edge. But the right question is not the total cost of ownership – it is: What is the Total Cost of Change? In fast evolving world of marketing, ability to respond fast to changing market conditions is ever more important.

The last generation marketing solutions including content management systems were built for periodic launches, predictable loads and optimized to lower the cost of ownership under those scenarios. The game has changed. We need a CMS that can offer faster time to market and can deal with unpredictable response without overbuilding or overpaying for capacity and do so with the goal of minimizing the time, effort and money it costs to change.

CIOs that can deliver a solution to their marketing counter-parts that has the lowest cost of change are enabling marketing agility. Site.com is a cloud CMS built for this new era.

Site.com: Cloud CMS Built for the Social Enterprise

We are delivering to our customers a CMS that is built ground up for the challenges outlined above and to give marketers the agility they need without burdening IT with having to worry about servers, databases, firewalls, routers, content delivery networks and several other pieces that must be put together, scaled and tested in a traditional on-premise CMS – and all this is built on 13 years of proven technology that is trusted by over 200,000 customers.

The on-premise legacy CMS systems have run their course. We think there is a better way forward and its built with the following core tenets.

Site.com is:

Built for Cloud: After a decade of rapid growth, even the legacy vendors have found religion in cloud – and for good reason. In order to meet the challenges like faster time to market, you need a CMS that’s built for the cloud and not bolted on, or simply a hosted outside your firewall – as I like to point out just because you put a car on a ferry, it doesn’t turn it into a boat. Let’s start with – time to market – can you really afford the time (and money) to buy a CMS, the app servers, the databases, the hardware, the network capacity – and make it all work together in time to launch your latest product or event. And even if you do have a system already setup and ready to go, how do you deal with a sudden spike in interest when fortune (or misfortune) strikes you. Site.com, like all of salesforce.com services, is built multi-tenant – and this means that a spike in traffic for you is likely only a minor blip for us. Site.com is elastic and can scale without requiring hardware or software upgrades because its built on a multi-tenant cloud platform.
Integrated with CRM and the Salesforce Platform: Websites and social pages are designed to typically either educate, inform and acquire new customers or to service existing customers. Site.com comes with pre-built integration to our Sales Cloud so capturing leads for a marketer is as simple as dragging and dropping a form on a page. You don’t need to write jdbc code, install connectors, configure DMZ ports – all tasks that typically require getting on the IT backlog. The data shows up in database.com that powers Sales Cloud. The same is true for customer service and support websites – no integration required. Even if you are not a customer that uses Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, Site.com can simply capture the data as custom tables in the built-in database. Force.com applications can similarly now capture data or display data on a website. Site.com is open – this means you can connect to other sources of data that could be residing on-premise or on another cloud provider – leveraging database.com REST APIs.
More than a CMS: While Site.com is meant to solve the same problem that legacy web content management systems do, it does much more. Site.com includes a WYSIWIG website builder, it includes all the infrastructure you need to run your website and as I mentioned above it includes database.com functionality. In some ways comparing Site.com to legacy CMS is an apples to oranges comparison because they only help you build and manage the content on the website but IT must shoulder the responsibility of integration of all the hardware and software needed to actually run a website, must figure out how to scale the website and keep it running 24x7.
Built-in CDN for Speed: In addition to keeping the website up and running 24x7 and scaling it, you need to deliver content to global audiences at blazing fast speeds. This requires leveraging content delivery networks that can cache the content globally and deliver it optimally. Every Site.com website gets the benefit of our integration with a leading CDN. All you have to do is hit the publish button.

There are many other features packed into Site.com but I wanted to highlight a few key features especially the ones that make the lives of marketers easier and reduce the burden on IT due to fundamentally different and superior architecture than legacy CMS built ground up for the social enterprise.

It’s important to highlight here that Salesforce.com bag of tools for marketers and IT to engage with customers extends beyond engagement via publishing. Here are other key product offerings directly relevant to marketers and their IT counterparts:

Heroku for Facebook Apps: Heroku is the only platform built right into the Facebook developer experience. As Director of Facebook Platform, Mike Vernal says “Heroku makes building and scaling Facebook appliations easier than ever. Developers can focus on their app, getting it in the hands of millions of Facebook users quickly”.
Radian6 for Social Listening: In order to engage with your customers, you must listen to them on their social platforms of choice. Radian6 enables organizations to become socially engaged enterprises, with the power to understand and gain insights about social media through metrics, measurement, sentiment and analytics reporting.

In summary, we believe that marketers can deliver superior experiences faster to their customers while IT can deliver a platform with lower total cost of change with Site.com.

Are You Ready for Today?

Finally, here are a few simple questions that marketers and IT need to ask ourselves about the environment we live in today:

What is our strategy to keep our brand websites, landing pages, corporate websites consistent and relevant as the world moves to be more social?
Does our website work on an iPad?
How long does it take us from making a decision to act to implementing that change on our web presence?
Will our websites be able to handle a day of exceptionally good press coverage or a campaign that goes viral?
What is the total cost of change in time, money and effort for us to make a change? Is that fostering or inhibiting innovation?
What would we do differently if we could make changes faster and experiment at lower cost?
What if every marketer could try little innovations? And what if we could turn the successful innovations into company wide successes?
Are we moving the needle for business?

This is the beginning of a conversation. We look forward to hearing from you.

We are listening to you on Twitter @SalesforceSite. To learn more about the product including access to free trial, customer success stories and product information, please visit http://www.site.com/ or www.facebook.com/sitedotcom.

(This blog post is originally published at Salesforce.com corporate blog.)

5 New Year's Resolutions and Predictions for 2012

2011-12-31T11:52:00.000-08:00

Let me just jump straight into them. No prologue.

Rick Perry: Yes, he tops my list. I will vote for him if, and that's a big Texas sized if - he promises to stop massacring English language. I think we need to have TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) requirement not just for foreign student visas but also presidential candidates.
Nokia Windows Phone: Nokia will unseat Apple and Android and the prophecy of the chosen one will come true. After all jumping from a burning platform to the winning new platform was "clearly" the wisest move. I was hoping to become CEO of a troubled company in EMEA one day, those hopes are now dashed for me and my fellow Americans.
Social Security Number goes Social: Whatever little privacy I have, I will voluntarily keep losing. I predict a new website called www.shareyourSSN.com - real friends just don't "Like" your status and "Share" the latest embarrassing article they read on Social News Reader, they share their Social Security Numbers in exchange for upto 10% off on most purchases made on your behalf by your friends. There is already very little "security" in social security so we will just end up with Social Numbers!
A Cloud in Every Box: You will be able to buy private clouds and install them, wire them up, hire consultants to integrate them, upgrade them, tune them - it will be amazing. The future will look just like the past except you will have to be willing to spend more and suspend your new learned concepts of what a cloud is supposed to be - no hardware, no software, automatic upgrades. The marketing budgets and ad campaigns will allow you to be able to say phrases like "We just bought a cloud and installed in our data center for $4M" or "We should have the cloud installed and working in 6 weeks" without feeling like you need therapy or medication.
Doctors with iPads: Yes, the super educated will finally catch up to 4 year olds when it comes to willingness to use technology to get their "homework" done. As Vinnie points out in the Rise of Digital Doctor, doctors are getting more comfortable with technology. Given the pressure from insurance companies, government incentives and patients - we will finally get closer to having an experience in a doctor's office that is more automated than the DMV!

Happy New Year!

The Entropy of Social Networks: Google Plus vs Facebook?

2011-06-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have a new social network and I am a proud profile carrying member of the new elite created by an artificial scarcity of invites. A technique now pretty much a requirement for launching anything new that's social with 2 benefits, the obvious buzz factor and the ability to iterate and learn before you expand.

But this post is about history of civilizations on the internet. While Google Plus is launched, MySpace was sold in last few days for a puny $30M and Friendster for $100M. Not to mention the once acclaimed AOL that was spun out of Time Warner in last few years. A $100B+ write down?

So why do social networks keep dying?

I think the answer lies in history of cities, and entropy of private information. Allow me to explain:

1. History of Cities: Social networks are like cities. They are born when small villages (Facebook at Harvard) expand due to a whole host of factors ranging from better cleaner layout, availability of resources (upload your pictures), ability to mingle with new kinds of people (dating & business relationships), etc. While all this is somewhat obvious - these social network cities need to be viral to expand. As more people join, we all derive more value --- hence, most of them are designed to be viral. However, this virality means over time our social network cities become crowded, cluttered and polluted with noise that makes them less valuable. Many of us intuitively feel this - how many of us have had that moment where you go from - I love my new social network city to I don't how all these people ended up being my friends? This extends beyond social network cities to many other communication tools - Yahoo! and AOL IM - small clean lists of people I wanted to talk to to a list of everyone who wants to bother us.

This happens to great cities too - London, New York, Calcutta, Mumbai - all have gone through there a growth spurts followed by the years/decades of being terrible places to live in. But the cost of building a new New York often outweighs the cost of cleaning it up and fixing it up. Where we can, we cheat and build a New Delhi (yes, New Delhi is literally a new Delhi built outside of Delhi; ditto for Jerusalem, and many other cities where you could geographically move out). Cities like New York, London, San Francisco end up spending money to fix the cities enacting laws to keep it livable and make it better over time.

Alas, with social network cities of MySpace and Friendster - no such luck. Its easier for the residents to move out gradually and live in the new suburbs of Facebook and Google Plus. And if your friends move with you, the move can be sudden and quite painless. You can live in 2 cities at once - and over time stop visiting your old city. This holds true for your old email and old IM too. Remember, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, or AIM - you don't call her any more, do you?

2. Entropy of Privacy
Over time, private information that is shared becomes less private. Think about your Social Security Number, when you first got your SSN - it was a rather private number. If you have been using it for a while though, its probably in the databases of dozens of banks, mortgage issuers, insurance companies, employers, payroll managers, your dentist's local office, and so on. This means its much more likely to have been disclosed to more people and therefore less private. Same is true for a new email address you acquire. For a while, very few people know your email address but as you start using your email address for its intended purpose i.e., email people - over time, email address gets shared by more and more entities and eventually is effectively public.This concept has been studied by academics with more precise definitions (see here).

The analog of this is your social network and how well managed it is. Disorder increases in your social network over time - you add more and more people, trust goes down, unless you manage your accounts as it were a full time job your social and business friends and acquaintances all get mixed - and sometimes you add strangers just to avoid offending someone.

So what do we do? We don't have to live in the mess we co-create! Rather than clean house, we move. Of course, over time - we re-create the same mess. But for the first few months, may be even years you will get a lot of value from having your clean new Google Plus Circles which is a smart innovation but hardly path breaking. Facebook could easily help us manage our friend lists by creating 5 prepopulated lists with privacy settings and auto suggesting who goes where - they have plenty of data on my social graph to help partition it which is a nerdy way of saying they can help me create my 'circles' using information such as who do I chat with, share pictures with etc.

Fundamentally, Google Plus so far is just Facebook (Circles) & Twitter (Stream) rebuilt from scratch with certain solutions that are cleaner (by definition) and better integrated with rest of my Google life especially Gmail.

There are however new kinds of social networks that are fundamentally different. Yatown.com is focused on the opposite of a global social network - they are creating a local social network, a way for you to talk to, collaborate with and discuss with your neighbors. While Facebook and Google Plus help me connect with my family in Australia and India - Yatown does it for my neighborhood in San Francisco. This is different and interesting.

Similarly, Quora is focused less on social networking and more on being a repository of the best answers on questions ranging from what cars to buy to how did company X get started. Its singularly focused on solving this problem with social being a side effect. Facebook Answers is somewhat similar but lacks the focus of Quora.

Summary
The mega trends towards people spending more time on social networks (Facebook, Facebook, Facebook) is a fundamental threat to Google. And Google Plus is a worthy response except it solves a problem that Facebook has already solved. It will be an interesting few months to see how this works out. In the meantime, I am much more keenly watching what's not been solved yet ranging from local social networks, Q&A networks to enterprise collaboaration.

In the enterprise world, Salesforce.com's Chatter is bringing private social networks to enterprises enabling Facebook like collaboration in a secure manner within the enterprise.

Exciting times to live and collaborate in.

(Disclosures: I am affiliated with Yatown and my opinions are therefore likely biased. My affiliation to Salesforce.com is also disclosed on my blog.)

I Was Wrong: The Next Big Thing is NOT Cloud Computing

2011-05-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, after 5 years of being a big fan of cloud computing. I admit defeat. I am, as of today, changing my worldview. Cloud Computing is no longer the future. And that's the bad news.

But the good news is that Cloud Computing is now an accepted reality - its the present - the market has tipped. The big server hugging companies of the past are "all in" with cloud, or are building next generation "in memory" cloud systems, or rolling out "cloud boxes" that you can take to go. While the false clouds proliferate, the customer is getting savvier.

More importantly, just 2 years ago, most CIO conversations I had started out with trying to convince them the value of cloud computing - especially the 'real cloud' which has been summarized perfectly by my friends at Heroku as 'no software, no private cloud', 'multi-tenancy' and 'abstraction=value'. Today, CIOs are no longer asking what is cloud computing? They are no longer asking do I need to do cloud computing? Is cloud computing a fad (based on generous free education by their existing leading vendors)?

The Conversation for the CIO has Shifted: How can I best leverage the Cloud?

Here are the top 5 conversations I am seeing in the industry.

1. What applications can or should I run in the Cloud? The answer here depends on the individual customers needs but the shift is quite radical. They want to find the best cloud computing app to meet their needs and then look for reasons why there needs cannot be met by that cloud app. This is a bias - and its based on good reason. When you buy a good SaaS app, you are not just getting functionality and performance that you see today - but most SaaS apps are continuously improving with every new release. You don't have to wait 5-15 years to have a massive upgrade/re-write project just because you want the new improvements in your app - features or architecture. For example, when a SaaS app makes the UI better, you can just turn it on. When a SaaS app adds new APIs or new protocols (REST), you simply start using it. You don't have to buy half a million dollars worth of middleware so you can send and receive XML messages. This aspect of cloud apps while subtle is a game changer - and once a CIO understands this by experiencing it first hand, he's much more willing to buy a cloud app that will likely keep pace with innovations than an on-premise app that will require major re-work to just make simple changes.

2. Which Cloud Platform should I standardize on? This is not a question I was hearing a few years ago. Thanks in part to the proliferation of cloud platform choices ranging from Force.com and Heroku to Amazon Web Services to Google App Engine to Azure, customers are looking to make a few strategic bets. CIOs want to validate, verify and then approve the use of a select one or few platforms. The answer often depends on what kind of applications you are looking to build and what level of security and open-ness you want. Salesforce.com is offering its customers (and please read my disclaimer) an open, social and mobile platform which is proven and built on technology running the world's leading enterprise cloud database for over 10 years. But no single platform will meet the needs of all your applications - hence an open platform that interoperates is a key consideration.

3. How do I get started? The most important question is the getting started question. Unlike a few years ago, there is a wide array of choices in how to get started. If you are looking for a packaged app, application stores like Salesforce.com AppExchange or Google App Marketplace are good places to look. If you are looking to build an application, if its a business application you want to pick a platform. The key to getting the value out of a platform is abstracting the underlying infrastructure and servers - a true Platform as a Service. Infrastructure as a Service is a reasonable choice if what you are building is so unique that you want to take the DIY approach.

4. Who can help me with Cloud adoption? There is a vast array of resources and partners now with dedicated cloud practices (much more so than just a couple of years ago) ranging from Accenture & Deloitte to Appirio & ModelMetrics and many, many more. These companies have not only taken the time to learn the new cloud technologies but can help with implementation, change management and be a guide in understanding what apps to move or build in the cloud first.

5. What about Security? This still comes up but less so as an objection but much more as a requirement for the business applications. They want to run their apps on a cloud they can trust. And they want to get the information that has made 10s of thousands of other customers rely on the cloud. Security and trust have to be earned daily by the cloud providers. But the FUD from the on-premise vendors that was working a few years ago is no longer working - customers want information on how the cloud providers ensure security. A very valid request that all of us should make from anyone we do business with.

This shift had taken place in silicon valley a few years ago where VCs would almost require you to build on the cloud and not 'burn' your money on building out your own. And now I see a similar mindset taking hold with many of the forward looking CIOs.

And yes, there are always a few that don't want to do anything with the cloud. But then there is a significant minority of people who have never and probably will never deposit a check or cash via an ATM.

India Revolt is Finally Here. Hello, Egypt and Tunisia.

2011-04-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

This is my shortest blog post.

I have written about how India and its economy faces some grave challenges. The country was ruled by Socialist elites after independence from the British for 50 years. Then it has been ruled by the same set of people under a false Capitalism - where corruption runs rampant, black money (unaccounted for, untaxed) is in the hands of a few who continue to live in two Indias (New York Times Letter).

This is the beginning of the end of the cancer at the core of India. The citizens are finally energized and engaged having seen fellow global citizens in Egypt, Libya and Yemen - they want their revolution but not for democracy. Its a fight for real corruption free self government.

As always, it starts with a Facebook page these days: India Against Corruption

UPDATE: Here is a video that explains the issues. And Tom Friedman wrote an article that explains "Theory of Everything".

Of Facebook and Goldman Sachs - Both Too Big To Fail?

2011-01-08T21:32:00.000-08:00

"Size, we are told, is not a crime. But size may, at least, become noxious by reason of the means through which it was attained or the uses to which it is put."
-Louis Brandeis, quoted in Tool Big Too Fail.

I just got back from a long nice vacation in India and read the book - Too Big Too Fail - by Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the best books I have read in a long time. The book talks about the greater than life leadership of men with ordinary human-ness thrust into extra-ordinary crises to play roles too big for even their giant shoes. When men that, as executives at companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, used to earning Millions of Dollars and dealing in budgets and balance sheets that ran into Billions of Dollars were pushed as CEOs of private institutions or as Treasury Secretary into solving a national crisis requiring over a Trillion Dollars. As you read the book, eventually you become immune to the bigness of the numbers.

In that sense, the $50 Billion number for Facebook while shocking to those that haven't kept up with the recent valuations of companies like GroupOn and Twitter may seem shocking - to other silicon valley watchers now seeing startups getting outrageous valuations, the $50 Billion dollar number seems sane.

Here are my thoughts on the Facebook-Goldman story:

$50 Billion is Low: We already know that Facebook is a viable alternative for companies spending money on online advertising. We also know that Google's revenue was $23B+ last year and that its market cap is close to $200B. And Google is still growing revenue having doubled it in 4 years. The secular shift of advertising dollars to online channels continues. Combine this with the fact that people are spending more time on Facebook than on any other property. And, that Facebook has finally cracked the code on generating some revenue ($1B+ estimates) and you can see that in due course of time Facebook could be as big or bigger than Google. And because the pie is growing, a great outcome for Facebook is not necessarily bad for Google. If we already know that Facebook has surpassed Google in page views, and can combine this with the fact that search is no longer the sole source of most information - and social is clearly where the action is moving to. Given all this, I personally think that Facebook deserves a valuation almost close to Google's. This means there could be a 2 to 4x upside for today's investors - if not even more.

SEC Needs to Smell The Coffee: We either throw away the 500 person rule for everyone or SEC needs to make a call on this. The Goldman deal, while very clever and ingenious (and why wouldn't it be given that some of the smartest people in the world work there) - is clearly not something that's going to fly under the radar. Heck, even I got a note from some company giving me a chance to participate in an "auction" to get Facebook shares. The secondary market and Goldman deal combined are making a mockery of our rules. But rather than crack down on this rule, the government needs to rethink this rule and more broadly the impact and appropriateness of Sarbox - a lot of these kind of things are happening to avoid Sarbox. To be fair, I doubt Facebook can't afford the so called $10-50M Sarbox compliance bill. But Sarbox is still a pain for smaller companies looking to raise funds, and we should fix what we can.

You are Not that much Smarter than your Dad: Google observers, for years, made a big deal about its 20% personal project culture, its ability to attract and retain the best talent etc. And how different it was from the 'Be Evil' empire from Washington State. But just as when you become a parent and start acting like a "Dad", only to realize how all those years of you thinking your Dad was dumb for telling you to do things a certain way or being overly protective - were now coming back and manifesting through you - as you get older you realize the wisdom of your fathers. Similarly, in a twist of irony, Google - much like Microsoft several years ago - had to move from stock options as the primary way of attracting and retaining talent to cash incentives and RSUs (restricted stock units) - an admission of the reduced perceived value of the options in the eyes of the young engineers. And just as Microsoft continues to look for clever ways of competing with Google - Google, for years, shall be judged by how effectively it competes with Facebook. Let's see how it feels now that the shoe is on the other foot.

No matter how this turns out, it's clear that we have now firmly entered the Facebook era - and the Facebook Imperative requires us to think about mobile and social first. And while Facebook and Google are out there competing and innovating with products, the Empire is spending huge amounts of money on Television and Print Ads to convince us consumers that Windows and Office are the cloud. I suppose, they should at least consider moving exclusively to ads on Facebook - at least the ads can be in the real cloud.

Database.com - Why? How? What?

2010-12-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

Why?

Developers are moving to the cloud because users expect their applications to be available from multiple devices – not just a PC or Mac – but a myriad new computers that come in the shapes of tablets, smart phones, and purpose-built devices. Users want be able to access their data from home, work, and on the road; CIOs want this data to be secure and manageable, the databases to be reliable and available; and developers want to be able to build more applications without having to worry about installing software, tuning the database, or worrying about scale.

Developers today are faced with some false choices – they can choose a database that was built for the on-premise world and is hosted in a “blue” cloud replicating the architecture and the pains of on-premise; or, they can choose a database that’s built for the cloud but lacks basic features like the ability to have a schema e.g., key value cloud databases. Moreover, users don’t just want a data store – they want to be able to search this data, report on this data, and have a model for securely sharing this data with the right people.

Our customers have had access to a reliable, scalable, and secure cloud database for over 10 years now. The database that underlies all of salesforce.com including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Force.com – is built for the cloud with a unique multitenant architecture that scales – our customers executed over 25 Billion in the last quarter, and now store over 20 Billion records in the database. Until today, this database was accessible via our applications and our platform – but we realized that this unique technology can serve the needs of many more developers and customers if it could be accessed by developers on any platform, using any language and with any device or computer.

In launching Database.com, we are taking the next logical step in the evolution of our platform toward openness. Database.com is an open database, accessible from any language – Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, etc. – any platform, including not only our cloud platforms, such as force.com and VMforce, but also Amazon, Google, Azure, Heroku, etc., and of course accessible directly from any device.

Let’s evaluate the need for Cloud 2 Database from the perspective of three key stakeholders – users, developers and CIOs.

CIO

CIOs no longer want to spend 85 percent of their budget just keeping the lights on. They want to unleash innovation and deliver business value. This year’s Gartner survey reveals the top ten items on CIOs’ budgets. Cloud computing is near the top of the list, which also includes Web2.0, mobile, and data & document management.

If you are a CIO, here are few questions to help to assess the need for Database.com:

How much time and money does it take to manage databases today in your current environment?
How can you match the innovation of the Facebook Era and bring it to your enterprise? The Facebook generation is no longer just people just graduated from college but also baby boomers (see this New York Times report - requires registration).
Are you able to deliver apps that are social and mobile?
How much time and money is wasted in kluging together disparate technologies just to get basic features like search and reporting to work against your existing database systems?
What if you could write your applications for any platform and any language but not have to worry about mundane tasks that provide neither business value nor agility?

Developer

If you are a developer, here is a list of questions you need to ask about applications that you want to build:

Can you start building your application right away or do you need to first install and fuse together ten different pieces?
Are you spending more time writing interesting, new applications or more time simply keeping the old ones running?
Are your OS upgrades, database upgrades, and hardware upgrades managed for you? Or do you have to spend time doing that?
Are you spending time on database setup, provisioning, management and other tasks?
Are you able to write the business logic of the application and then offer features like search and mobile? Or do you have to cobble it all together?
Are you using an infrastructure cloud today? If so, does it offer all the services you need to build your apps and does it automatically manage those for you?
Can you build apps that are mobile and social? How do you do that?
Are you having fun?

Programming used to be fun. We think it can be fun again if you can focus on what you do best and let all the painful stuff like OS and database patch upgrades be managed by the cloud provider.

How?

Database.com was built with three core principles in mind with a clear focus on Openness:

Any Platform: As an enterprise database in the cloud, it should be accessible to developers on all platforms - cloud or on-premise - through standards-based API’s and protocols.
Any Language: Being open to any language is critical to supporting the innovation of the developer community. Development and adoption of new languages is increasing at an amazing rate but data storage represented a universal need.
Any Device: With the growth of mobile devices and an increasingly connected internet-of-things, the database must be open to use from any and all of these clients in a clean, consistent and secure manner.

Building business logic for an application is becoming easier and easier as tools and Platform-as-a-Service vendors continue to evolve and deliver unparalleled developer productivity. However, setting up and managing the database that is secure & scalable continues to be a challenge. The developer must choose upfront whether they can afford the restrictions of a cloud data store or must take on the administrative burden of a traditional RDBMS.

With database.com, the developer can avoid having to choose between functionality and complexity and take advantage of the bests of both worlds.

Multitenant: Database.com was designed from the very beginning to manage a vast, ever-changing set of database structures on behalf of each and every application using a common infrastructure. This is not a re-hosting of 30-year old notion of a database system.
Internet Scale: The service is proven to deliver scalability and is already the largest enterprise cloud database on the market.
Automated Upgrades: Software, hardware, and system infrastructure is upgraded automatically to ensure that your applications can leverage advances in performance and security without effort.
Automatic Tuning & Backup: It is a given that data and workloads change over time. With Database.com, the administration for ensuring continuing performance is provided as a part of the service. Backups or disaster recovery services are available automatically when needed without impacting development and deployment schedules.

The service is focused on making the life of a developer better:

Application Developer Centric: Database.com is focused on the application developer – eliminating the need for low level administration tasks associated with the pain of administering previous generation database systems. As a service, it exposes that functionality needed to deliver killer applications and takes care of all the rest for you.
Search: You have the ability to search any and all data in your enterprise apps.
Web Services: Without having to install software or write any code, your data is available via web services in a secure, managed way via SOAP and REST APIs.
Built-in Security: Security in an application is both critical and extremely difficult to get right - the rules and exploits are constantly changing. Database.com takes care of the underlying security so that you can focus on the data privacy needed within your application.
Event-driven Push: Proactive notifications are quickly becoming a required feature in many applications - particularly mobile apps. Database.com provides a built-in infrastructure for event-driven push without requiring you as a developer to learn, develop and deploy a whole new set of infrastructure components.
Social Data Model & Feeds: Finally, every database built on Database.com is inherently social - supporting an activity feed schema, API’s for posting comments and files and notifying users of new activities.

Now, What?

If you are a CIO, IT leader, or a business user:

Talk to your salesforce.com executive in a conversation on your database needs and your application development roadmap.
Watch these videos to learn more about Database.com and the Force.com platform.
You can get started today with a Free Force.com Developer Edition!
Encourage your development team to start building applications using the Free Force.com Developer Edition.

If you are a developer:

Read Developing with Database.com, a practical roadmap to help you get started with Database.com development.
Sign up for a Free Force.com Developer Edition account and get started today.
Because Database.com is the database at the heart of Force.com, you can tap into its power today using Force.com APIs and toolkits.

Join the conversation with:

Steve Fisher, EVP Technology, salesforce.com

Get ready to be a Cloud 2 Database developer!

(This blog post was cross-posted by permission from http://blog.database.com/blog/2010/12/06/openforcloud2/)

Facebook Messages is not just Email. Nor is Gmail. What's new?

2010-11-15T23:48:00.000-08:00

Let me start out by pointing out the obvious - Facebook has been nothing short of a revolution in how we live our online lives. It connects me better to my friends, family and co-workers. It has inspired changes in how our work lives are changing.

Facebook Email Will Be Successful But That Doesn't Mean Its Different!

I have now read at least 13 blog posts on the Facebook's grand unification of messages from email, text and chat all in one box filtered via your social graph - as the future of communication.

I am yet to find anything that's truly new.

I have been using Gmail for years and here is what I see:

Gmail stores all my Google Talk chat messages unless I go off record.
Gmail stores all my email.
Gmail prioritizes my inbox based on not just my address book (which is not much different from my social graph) but also other factors like which email I have responded to.
I use Google Voice so I get my text messages and voice messages (transcribed) in my Inbox and its all in one place.

So, all I want to know is how is this new @facebook.com fundamentally different. Take a look at the explanation and the FAQ, and you tell me. In fact, certain features like how you capture SMS messages seem to be fairly awkward compared to my Google Voice.

The few things that could be better with Facebook but nothing prevents Google from doing the same are:

Better spam filtering.
Native apps for iPhone, Android etc. to capture my text messages (SMS).

Despite all this, I still want to try Facebook Messages (or Email as media is calling it). And I think it will gain wide adoption. I just am not seeing breakthrough innovation,.. yet. And I am happy to wait.

Clouds in Boxes - Super Size It - Want Storage and Servers With That?

2010-10-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

I was absolutely mesmerized by Larry Ellison's keynote at Oracle Open World - the winning of the America's Cup was one of the best short films I have seen. And just as I thought this could be fun, the keynote started with Larry defining Cloud Computing. I was at the edge of my seat now, especially given my history of having worked at Redwood Shores.

Here is some background. As Paul Greenberg points out, there was a keynote 2 years ago where we got a hint of things to come. Paul quotes Larry Ellison from his earlier post:

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than woman’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
“We’ll make cloud computing announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.’”

So, here we were - the time to define cloud computing by a remarkable leader who truly has built one of the most fascinating companies with an M&A machine that is hard to take lightly. The Mark Hurd hiring moment was pure art (of war) - essentially forcing HP's hand and now HP has responded by hiring Leo formerly from SAP (and Ray Lane) - this will likely get more interesting before it ends.

Next, Larry spent what seemed like infinity to me - explaining Amazon Web Services EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and Salesforce.com. There was lot of clever word play and by calling the box - Exalogic Elastic Compute Cloud (as Paul calls it E2C2) - I think Oracle made a big leap towards accepting the reality - the world wants cloud computing not more hardware. However, there is just one hitch - this "cloud" comes in a box as in hardware, and its elastic only if you are willing to pay $1,075,000 to get started. After that you can use as little of it as you want - not more because that would require purchasing errr... another "cloud".

Let me quote a few fellow writers:

Larry Dignan of ZDNet writes in an article titled - "Oracle's Exalogic box: Cloudwashing at its best?"

NIST has put a lot of time in defining cloud computing. One core tenet of cloud computing “rapid elasticity,” where capacity can be provisioned and scaled up and down at will. Think Amazon Web Services.
Does the Exalogic box meet that criteria? Will Oracle take a box back if you don’t need the computing power?
Probably not. Simply put, Oracle’s Exalogic box gives you capacity on demand because you’re still buying more capacity than you need. It’s a nice box, but to the IT buyer Exalogic may not be all that elastic when it hits your budget.
Unless Oracle takes away the Exalogic capacity you spent a few million dollars for and gives you your money back, the true elasticity of the Exalogic box is a bit fuzzy.

And just as the keynote defined Amazon as the gold standard of cloud computing and established a rhyming correlation between the AWS Elastic Compute Cloud and Exalogic Elastic Compute Cloud - Amazon Web Services' CTO weighed in via his (real cloud based) Twitter feed tweeting:

To be fair, the Exalogic box appears to be a very powerful machine with lots of computation power packed into a rack full of servers with impressive connectivity (Infiniband inside and 10gigE outside), lots of RAM and SSD, etc. In its own right, it could be an appealing alternative to customers with million dollar budgets looking for heavyweight on-premise servers. Unless it comes with a URL and says "Login Here" to start - its not a cloud. No matter how big the box is, you are still boxed in.

Just look at all the cloud services you may use in your daily life and how many you would buy a box for:

Elastic Gmail Box for $1,075,000 to get started? $75,000? $5,000?
Elastic Facebook Box for $1,075,000 to get started? $75,000? $5,000?
Elastic Amazon S3 Box for $1,075,000 to get started? $75,000? $5,000?
Elastic Dropbox Box for $1,075,000 to get started? $75,000? $5,000?

Desktopless World: Is Your Email Signature Stuck in Desktop Era?

2010-07-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

The world is changing to mobile. Are your email signatures and etiquettes keeping pace? I have been emailing my close friends, one friend at a time, on how their email signatures need to evolve and thought a blog post was over due.

But then I came across an excellent post from the GigaOm network by Dave Clarke - The Email Signature: From Efficient to Overkill - but I found that it still missed a key element - the mobile, desktopless world we live in. So, I am going to take creative liberty and improvise his post to share what I consider to be the key to a great email signature, and the etiquettes.

The key is to have a concise, one line email signature that captures how I can contact you and learn about you.

Here is a typical long email signature and yes, I copied it from a real person's email but changed the identity:

Hi Anshu,

I am following up regarding sale of 7,000 user licenses. Did you get the invoice?

-Linda

Linda P. Smith

Senior Vice President, Boiler Plate Inc.

799 Bounty Dr, Suite 204, Foster City, CA 94107

(919) 945 8344 Phone (919) 848 4843 FAX

Follow me on Twitter @LindaPSmith

Find me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/LindaPSmith

Blogging at http://followmeblog.com

Yes, this is a real signature. And I have seen longer signatures that include other modes of connectivity. So let's look at what is and is not needed in an email signature.

5 Steps to a Great Email Signature

1. No Email Address: This is an obvious one if you think about it - if I am getting an email from you, I already have your email address. Its redundant, get rid of it.

2. Only One Line: Your goal should be to fit your email signature on one line. This is the most important point (and missing from Dave Clarke's great post). Here is my email signature and how it looks in an email:

Hi Dave,

Great post on email signatures. Check out my post and let me know what you think about the improvisations I propose.

Anshu

Anshu Sharma | Vice President | 919.888.4343 (m) | www.anshublog.com

Here's why? Most people these days read your email on a mobile device and every additional line you have makes it harder to scroll and read a thread. Remember, this rule applies even if you are not sending the email from a mobile device - its about the recipient and not the sender.

3. No Fax: I agree with Dave, unless you work in a job where you regularly get faxes, leave it out. Your recipient can always call or email you to ask for it as needed.

4. No Address: Again, same as above. No need to include a mailing address unless you expect people to show up at your office. Make sure your website has that information (and that when people search your company's name on Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps, it shows up).

5. Avoid Social Media Overload: We get it that you have a blog, a twitter account, a great resume on LinkedIn and so on and so forth. Pick one URL that is most relevant and publish that in your signature. If you have been watching TV these days, you will notice that Honda and Toyota ask you to visit www.facebook.com/Toyota etc. and not their corporate website. The call to action to visit you must be simplified. You can then let me connect to other media from that website.

As we keep adding channels from LinkedIn to Twitter; and delivery mechanisms from desktops to iPhones to iPads; and message formats from tweets to texts to emails. Its upto us to help each other maintain a semblance of inbox sanity. A clear concise signature and a clear concise subject line are the first two steps in that direction.

The Linchpin and The New Polymath - The Indispensable Individuals and Organizations

2010-06-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite books of the year is the Linchpin by Seth Godin - it takes you on a journey from how our economy has evolved to a point where its neither necessary nor optimal for you to be a cog in the wheel of a faceless system that treats you as an anonymous resource that can be substituted - we are living in the age where those rules no longer apply, even if most of us don't know that or are in denial because we don't face the fact - more than ever, you are in control of your destiny. The book revolves around how you can be a Linchpin by being good at more than one thing - the power of AND over OR. If you are a writer and that's all you can do, you can be replaced by a slightly cheaper, slightly better writer - but if you are a writer who also is a great speaker or connects with his audience or writes about a passion that cannot be easily copied - then you are the indispensable linchpin. I see Tom Friedman of New York Times as a Linchpin, for example.

The New Polymath by friend and fellow Enterprise Irregular Vinnie Mirchandani is about companies - which in my mind are nothing but a collection of individuals with a shared purpose - be it the end of software or the beginning of CO2 free automobile industry. The book takes us through a journey of many companies that embody a Polymath - they are not just good at doing one thing (making computers or phones) but are transforming the industries by being good at several - an easy example is Apple.

About Apple, Vinnie writes:

Steve Jobs is explaining one major reason for the iPhone’s success— Apple’s ability to integrate hardware and software engineering: “We realized that almost all—maybe all—of future consumer electronics, the primary technology was going to be software. And we were pretty good at software. . . . None of the handset manufacturers really are strong in software.”

That is a modern polymath at work—integrating multiple modern disciplines. An AND mind-set, not an OR mind-set. Tear down an iPhone 3GS and it shows Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and GPS transceivers and lenses and chips and circuits and batteries—a marvel of miniaturization. It functions as a Web access device, a camera, a music player, a navigation device, a compass, a voice recorder, a modem, and more—and, of course, it is also a phone. That is a polymath as devices go.

He then goes on to write about many companies and organizations that we commonly think of as cutting edge like Google, Apple but also those that you may not read about every day including National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the technologies that come together in the National Hurricane Center to Kleiner Perkins Cleantech. There is also an entire chapter devoted to Salesforce.com (the company I proudly work for) and cloud computing.

But above all, this is a book that uses the examples of these polymath companies to illustrate the key point - you (the company) need to bring together multiple, sometimes unrelated ideas & technologies to bear to create something beautiful, to create something of lasting value, to innovate and to transform - not just industries but people's lives.

As Marc Benioff says in the foreword to the New Polymath-

You have the power to create or join organizations that address society’s issues. You do not have to decide between making a social contribution or building a successful company or career. You can do many things. You can be a Polymath. As Mirchandani says, “it’s time for AND not OR.”

I see the two books - Linchpin and The New Polymath as two sides of the same coin - its only when you create or hire linchpins in your company that you can be a company worthy of being the new polymath.

VMforce: Why? What? How?

2010-04-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

There are a few questions every CIO, developer and business user will ask about VMForce:

What is VMforce?
Why does it matter to me?
How will it work?
Will it help me build new kinds of apps that are social and mobile?

In simple terms, VMforce service will allow every Java developer to write applications that can run in the cloud. VMforce provides out-of-the-box Java deployment in the cloud that is pre-integrated with a relational database, full-text search engine, reporting and analytics, user and identity management., as well as all the services that are needed to build, run, and manage an enterprise-grade business application.

VMforce allows developers to use Spring, the most popular framework for Java applications today to rapidly build an application and instantly deploy it on an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure. The Spring Framework is backed by the SpringSource division of VMware.

Why does VMforce matter?

CIO

CIOs no longer want to spend 85 percent of their budget just keeping the lights on. They want to unleash innovation and deliver business value. This year's Gartner survey reveals the top ten items on CIOs' budgets. Virtualization and cloud computing are at the very top of the list, which also includes web2.0, mobile, and data & document management.

With the Force.com cloud platform, CIOs today have access to more than 1,000 business applications on the AppExchange that work with our multi-tenant architecture and require no additional development. Indeed, customers are taking advantage of the platform to create custom apps. So far they have built more than 150,000 apps.. But CIO's want to do even more.

If you are a CIO, here are few questions to help to assess the need for VMforce:

How much time and money does it take to build applications today in your current environment?

How can you match the innovation of the Facebook Era and bring it to your enterprise? The Facebook generation is no longer just people just graduated from college but also baby boomers (see this New York Times report).

Are you able to deliver apps that are social and mobile?

How much time and money is wasted in kluging together disparate technologies just to get basic features like search and reporting to work?

What if you could use all your existing in-house Java skill sets but not have to worry about mundane tasks that provide neither business value nor agility?

Business User

If you are a business user, here is a simple set of questions to determine if you need VMforce. Log in to your one or two most heavily used apps and see if the following rings a bell:

Does your application run inside the web browser?
Does your application allow you to search by any keyword across all data that you are allowed to see?
Does your application allow you to write a report that aggregates relevant data? Can you create a dashboard yourself?
Does your application allow you to see your data when you are on an iPhone or a BlackBerry? Can you even connect to your application?
Does your application have a feed for relevant changes to data that you care about just like Facebook?

This is just some of the functionality we take for granted in our personal lives when we use applications like Facebook, Google Gmail, and Amazon.com.Why can't all business applications offer similar ease-of-use and access?

Developer

If you are a developer, here is a list of questions you need to ask about applications you want to build:

Can you start building your application right away or do you need to first install and fuse together ten different pieces?
Are you spending more time writing interesting, new applications or more time simply keeping the old ones running?
Are your OS upgrades, database upgrades, and hardware upgrades managed for you? Or do you have to spend time doing that?
Are you able to write the business logic of the application and then offer features like search and reporting? Or do you have to cobble it all together?
Are you using an infrastructure cloud today? If so, does it offer all the services you need to build your apps and does it automatically manage those for you?
Can you build apps that are mobile and social? How do you do that?
Are you having fun?

Programming used to be fun. We think it can be fun again if you can focus on what you do best and let all the painful stuff like OS and database patch upgrades be managed by the cloud provider.

How?

Java developers today have no clear path to building next-generation cloud applications. They can build on-premise applications and deploy them on legacy stacks, but installing and integrating the different pieces you need to build a truly useful application can be a nightmare. Or, they can take the same jumbled stack and run it in a hosted environment – renting servers by the houror by the month. While Infrastructure as a Service offerings have some benefits if you want to test an application or need spike capacity, they still require the developer and the systems administrators to do a lot of heavy lifting – it's like renting an empty apartment where water, electricity and garbage are provided but you must bring all the appliances, hook them up yourself, and make all the repairs. What you really want is a fully furnished apartment that you can customize to meet your needs and not be responsible for every minor upgrade or fix.

Before VMforce, a Java developer that wanted to run his applications in a cloud had to assemble, configure, integrate, and manage a cumbersome set of disparate pieces ranging from storage to application servers and a database.Even then the developer was only half-way done. Real business applications need more than just an app server and a database. CIOs need to meet demands of end users for features that most of us now take for granted and make it all work with their enterprise architecture. This includes:

Search: Ability to search any and all data in your enterprise apps
Reporting: Ability to create dashboards and run reports, including the ability to modify these reports
Mobile: Ability to access business data from mobile devices ranging from BlackBerry phones to iPhones
Integration: Ability to integrate new applications via standard web services with existing applications
Business Process Management: Ability to visually define business processes and modify them as business needs evolve
User and Identity Management: Real-world applications have users! You need the capability to add, remove, and manage not just the users but what data and applications they can have access to
Application Administration: Usually an afterthought, administration is a critical piece once the application is deployed

Java developers used to either spent days and months to build and integrate these features after they finished writing their business logic and user interface (what most people think of as an "application") or they simply avoided providing this functionality, even though it is critical to business users and to the CIO. Creating it was just too onerous. Developers needed to weave a net of technologies or perform a fusion of unrelated technologies offered as a set of products.And these are just the features of applications users have wanted during the last decade.

During next decade users accustomed to social apps like Facebook will demand features allow real-time collaboration and work in the new desktop-less world of iPhone's and iPad's. As a developer, how will you build these applications? What new technologies will youneed to master? How many servers will you need to connect just to get a feed fromyour latest order tracking up so that it can be served up via iPhone to end users? Why is all this so hard? How can it be easier?

Social Profiles: Who are the users in this application so I can work with them?
Status Updates: What are these users doing? How can I help them and how can they help me?
Feeds: Beyond user status updates, how can I find the data that I need? How can this data come to me via Push? How can I be alerted if an expense report is approved or a physician is needed in a different room?
Content Sharing: How can I upload a presentation or a document and instantly share it in a secure and managed manner with the right set of co-workers?

Image: Force.com Application with Chatter feed

The Force.com platform makes building these data- and process-driven business apps really easy. With Chatter as part of the platform, you get many services out-of-the-box from feeds and updates to secure data access from your iPhone or Blackberry without having to write cumbersome code or connect to various gateways.

Meanwhile, in a land far, far away, VMware is transforming how businesses run their applications. With SpringSource as part of the VMware family, they have an incredible set of technologies to empower developers and CIOs. Java developers have known, used, and love the Spring Framework as a much more productive alternative to traditional technologies.

We have married the two sets of technologies to provide a rich development and runtime platform for Java developers. So let's see what it is comprised of and how it works.

Build

Now, with VMforce, Java developers can use the familiar Eclipse-based SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) development environment (IDE) – leveraging Force.com as a powerful relational database. Force.com provides much more functionality than any on-premise RDBMS from full-text search to analytics to mobile access. Simply, write the code in Java and store your data in Force.com; you then simply drag and drop the app into VMforce in your IDE and your app is now deployed on VMforce.

Run

The application runs on VMforce inside Salesforce.com data centers. VMforce is jointly managed and operated with VMware. The data is stored in Force.com where it is securely managed and backed up. In addition, application data can be searched, accessed on mobile devices, and reported on. The application runs on top of VMware vSphere, vCloud, and the tc Server, an enterprise version of Apache Tomcat.

Manage

Actually, there is not a whole lot to manage. The database, the search engine, the mobile capabilities, the business processes – all are managed for you. This is not your rent-a-server and perform-fusion-on-it cloud. This is true cloud computing – no software and no hardware to manage beyond your application logic.

So, there you have it – an enterprise cloud computing platform for running your Java applications using the popular Spring Framework – all running on technologies from VMware and Salesforce.com – the leaders in cloud computing. All integrated and managed for you. Hello Cloud!

Cloud 2: The Second Revolution

We believe that Cloud Computing is ready for a second revolution. The first one moved applications such as CRM, human resources, and payroll into the cloud and provided functionality similar to on-premise technologies. The next-generation of cloud applications will not only run in the cloud but also offer features and functionality that meet the Facebook imperative of a social, desktopless world. We call it Cloud 2.

VMforce, a service jointly offered by our partner VMware and Salesforce.com, can help you build Cloud 2 apps on a trusted cloud infrastructure (Force.com) using a programming language (Java) and framework (Spring) familiar to millions of developers.

Java Developers can now go from "Hello World" to "Hello Cloud"!

Now What?

If you are a CIO, IT leader, or a business user:

Register at www.vmforce.com or contact your Salesforce.com or VMware account executive
Watch these videos to learn more about Salesforce.com and VMware
You can get started with a Free Force.com Developer Edition and not only build but deploy and run applications at no cost!
Encourage your development team to start building applications using the Free Force.com Developer Edition

If you are a developer:

Register at www.vmforce.com to get the latest updates including availability and beta signup information
If you are a Java programmer and already familiar with Spring, you can learn about Force.com atdeveloper.force.com
You can sign up for the Free Developer Edition, which includes all the great features mentioned earlier and start building Force.com apps and/or learn how to write these apps
If you are a Force.com developer and want to take advantage of Java, click over towww.springsource.com and learn to build Spring-based Java apps by using the SpringSource Tool Suite and all the innovation in the Spring community

Join the conversation with:

Steve Herrod (CTO, VMware)
Rod Johnson (GM, SpringSource Division, VMware)
Parker Harris (EVP Technology, Salesforce.com).

Get ready to be a Cloud 2 app developer with Java!

This what some customers and partners are saying about VMforce. Watch!

5 Big Trends I Missed and You Probably Did Too!

2010-04-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

I had an opportunity to meet an interesting set of Silicon Valley leaders last week, and I realized what a loser I am. Okay, so not really - but I did miss out on a couple of trends while I focused on cloud computing and social - trends closer to what I do for a living. I thought I would look back and give you a list of big trends I missed or didn't pay enough attention to, and what I plan to do about it:

Energy Management (or Carbon Apps): The silicon valley has several startups and big companies rolling out products that help you measure your energy use, monitor it and provide you actionable reports. On the other side, products like Cisco EngergyWise, are making it possible to actually gather such information. While I was aware of startups like Hara, C3 etc. - its only in last few months I have paid attention to this market and realized how big this can be. I initially dismissed it as a simple carbon footprint measuring app most likely sold to meet compliance need. But if you think through the future, you will realize that a fully integrated managed end-to-end solution that tells a company like Pepsi how much energy (and even other resources like water) it uses, where, what it costs and how it can lower its consumption - this could be an enormously useful and valuable product. Next time, I will suspend my skepticism long enough to see what a new market can be and not judge too quickly. Easier said than done though.
Social Gaming and Virtual Goods: I don't play video games, never have. I have always spent way too much time on the computer and thought of gaming as just another way to add to my stiff neck muscles. But in the process, I completely ignored how big Zynga with games like Farmville has become. Business Week reports that it made over $450 million in revenue last year primarily by selling virtual goods. Next time, I see a trend like this that I don't get - I am going to talk to teenagers, friends and spend time trying to understand it.
iPhone: I knew about iPhone and who didn't unless you have been living in Himalayas but since my work device was a Blackberry, I never bought one or used one on a regular basis till a few months ago. This meant I was out of the loop on the latest cool apps. And since I wasn't missing this functionality or that functionality - I wasn't spending time dreaming up killer iPhone apps. (I spend my time dreaming up killer cloud computing platform and apps.) Next time, I am getting the latest device - I already got an iPhone, a Kindle, a new Macbook Pro and am going to get an iPad. Owning cool devices is moving from a cost of living to investment column.
SMS: Yes, I know SMS and have used SMS but I never used it like the teenagers today do. Or spent time understanding how its changing the landscape in emerging markets. SMS is being used for all kinds of novel uses from providing medical advice to checking bank balances especially in places like Africa and India. There was a huge opportunity around this trend and companies like GupShup.com have done well to capitalize on them.
Video over Internet: Youtube seemed like a bad scheme to loose lots of money by splurging on storage and bandwidth and giving it away to consumers for free. I remember struggling graduate students at UNC Chapel Hill (top ranked school in Graphics and Virtual Reality) with streaming videos and trying to optimize the network and the codecs. Seemed like a joke 10 years ago. Between, Netflix and Cisco Telepresence - our lives are changed and will be unmistakably transformed in next 3 to 5 years as Cisco Telepresence like technology becomes cheap enough to be in every living room. What if every XBox, Wii and Samsung TV had telepresence built into it?

The list is even longer - I didn't pay enough attention early on to multi-core processors, SSDs, connected devices revolution, -- the list is long. What trends have you missed?

VMforce is coming

2010-04-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

VMforce is coming!

I am personally very excited. Come check it out at www.vmforce.com

Life Lessons from Warren Buffett Letter and Seth Godin's Linchpin

2010-02-27T12:03:00.000-08:00

I am an avid fan of Warren Buffett letters, and today is my lucky day because we have a new annual letter. And it comes with not just the update for the year but for the benefit of the new shareholders (due to partial stock deal in acquiring the Rail company) - a nice introduction and summary of how Berkshire operates.

I am neither a multi-million dollar investor (yet!) nor an investment guru so I read these letters for two reasons - learning how to think about your business (or business unit for some of us), and personal life lessons. I am also reading Seth Godin's latest amazing book Linchpin that asks a very simple question - Are you Indispensable? And while the two - Warren Buffett's shareholder letter and Seth Godin's book are on very different topics - I think there is a common underlying life lesson.

Let me share my key takeaways from this year's letter in light of Linchpin:

How We Measure Our Selves: Intrinsic or Market Value?

Warren Buffett and his team evaluated several metrics and settled on one. Here is what he has to say:

Our metrics for evaluating our managerial performance are displayed on the facing page. From the start, Charlie and I have believed in having a rational and unbending standard for measuring what we have – or have not – accomplished. That keeps us from the temptation of seeing where the arrow of performance lands and then painting the bull’s eye around it.

This question is equally important in our personal and professional lives. How do you measure your success? Here are some choices:

What car you drive? This one has an obvious appeal - everyone can see it and its hard to lie about it. However, just like a stock price that barely reflects the fundamentals - the car you drive says more about the size of your ego (and I am not going there), your inability to understand depreciating versus appreciating assets, or just taste. A fabulous car that makes you feel good when you drive or pick up your date can be a good thing - but has almost nothing to do with - how much money you make or how wealthy you are or even how interesting a person you are. It actually reflects how much you are willing to spend and how wealthy you want to appear and how boring you would be if you had a Geo Metro. This one was easy, let's talk about some hard questions.
What is your job title? Are you indispensable? I love getting promoted as much as the next guy but I learned a lesson many years ago that this again is an outcome that you have little control over - like the buy/sell decision by a Wall St. investor who just got money selling derivatives to a loser and wanted to 'buy something' or the investor who got a margin call and had to 'sell something'. In many companies, the promotions and titles are like that - in good years, we 'promote people' and in bad years, we have to 'trim'. If you let the management decide how you perceive your intrinsic value, you are going to be giddy when you should probably be scared and vice-versa. A much better question is - What value do I add? - and how can I measure it. In fact, job titles and roles are a limiting constraint that you want to break out of. Just because someone calls you a sales engineer doesn't mean that you can't build a super cool real world application or actually make a sale or help product team decide the next big thing. Superstars do what excites them, and then titles and rewards follow. I have seen this happen too many times in my 12 years of working life. As Seth Godin says in Linchpin, his latest book - Are you Indispensable? And if not, what's holding you back - and job title is a really poor excuse.
Why don't they pay me right? Everyone feels underpaid. And some are actually underpaid relative to the market, the contributions, and the skill set. But this is a wrong metric again - you should be optimizing for the net present value of all future earnings - and not this year's paycheck. If job A allows you to launch a (database) company's SaaS strategy for ISVs but pays less than many other jobs - you should still take that job because over the rest of your life path A will end up helping you make more. This is something very few people realize. As Linchpin author, Seth Godin says in his book-

"You weren't born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were trained to become a cog.
There's an alternative available to you."
and adds..

"Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.
- David Mamet"

I don't want to be a cog no matter how amazing the machine is. Do you?

What We Don't Do?

I am sure we have all read 100s of articles and books on deciding what not to do is as important as choosing what to do. In fact, what not to do turns out to be much more critical. But we as humans are really bad at NOT doing. I devoted an entire post to the topic of "Wisdom of Not". In this year's (FY 2009) letter Warren Buffett writes:

Long ago, Charlie laid out his strongest ambition: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” That bit of wisdom was inspired by Jacobi, the great Prussian mathematician, who counseled “Invert, always invert” as an aid to solving difficult problems.

Think about it. And let's see how we can apply his wisdom to our lives:

Best at Something. Don't Take That Job or Buy That House: Warren says 'Charlie and I avoid businesses whose futures we can’t evaluate, no matter how exciting their products may be.' When evaluating your life choices, don't do something unless you understand it - better, you grok it. If you lived through the dot-com boom and bought stock in TheGlobe.com and Exodus because your neighbor told you or worse, your neighbor bought it, got rich and tried to hide it from you and then you caught on and bought it!! Then, you probably learned your lesson. For others, the home buying market may have been the teachable moment - as they say it.

We are ALL 'best at something' - Seth Godin points out that if you narrow your niche enough you can find out that while you may not be the best businessman (Warren took that title) or best Golf player (Tiger took that one and the waitress home) - you can often find that you are probably the best Thai food restaurant south of Market Street or the best tool for building web pages that do only one thing (Postlets).
Don't become dependent on the kindness of strangers: Warren Buffett says - 'We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers'. I would add relatives and friends too. And for businesses these days, you can barely rely on bankers leave alone strangers. This means be a thoughtful spender (I didn't say frugal), invest if you can and make lots and lots of trusted relationships where you give. Strangers, distant relatives and surface-level friends may not be there for you when you need them but people that you were good to will often be there.

That's enough food for thought for a day's blog post. The Warren Buffett letter and Seth Godin's book have 100s of such insights if you look for them and have the right attitude towards it. Try it, and let me know what you think.

And don't be a stranger. Click on the link on my blog site to subscribe - and leave me a comment.

Days of Our Lives - On IIT Life, Indian Education, and Geekdom

2009-12-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

Like to wish all my readers, a very warm happy holidays and merry Christmas. I don't watch a lot of Bollywood cinema but yesterday I went with friends to go see 3 Idiots - a movie about lives of 3 engineering college students during the four years in school and then the life afterwards. Having spent my formative 4 years at IIT Kharagpur, the oldest and best (in my completely biased and probably untrue opinion since they are all awesome) of the Indian Institutes of Technology - I was transported back more than a decade in time.

Scene from movie 3 Idiots (courtesy: www.santabanta.com)

Let me summarize what I learned from the movie about how life and aspirations are evolving in India, the effects of the global pipes (Cisco calls it the Human Network), and what this should mean for education here in my adopted country USA (or the country that adopted me!).

Geeks are Cool (in India)
While people definitely look upto the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Sergey & Brin, there are no 'highest grossing' Hollywood movies depicting the lives of MIT or Stanford college students. The college movies that do well here are movies about getting laid, smoking weed or Spring Breaks. I enjoy those movies too, and there is the occasional 'Good Will Hunting'. But all in all, the celebrated lifestyle is that of either the rich or the jock. This means if I am a kid growing up, I want to be cool - and the route to being cool is to chase money & fame, not invention and entrepreneurship. The heroes in India are no longer the Bollywood stars (only), the younger generation looks up to the engineer entrepreneurs like Nandan Nilekani of Infosys. As Wall St Journal commented recently -

Twenty years ago, no one could have imagined that four of the 10 richest chief executives in the world could be Indian. But Forbes recently released a top-10 list showing how much India has changed. Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon, was ranked second, followed by Mukesh Ambani (sixth), Anil Ambani (seventh) and Azim Premji (ninth); Warren Buffett came in first.

and -

The heroes of the old India were film stars, cricket players and, perhaps, freedom fighters and politicians. The heroes of the new India include businessmen. In 2003, when MTV India held a poll among its predominantly young viewers to pick the Icon of the Year, Anil Ambani won. The people he beat included filmstar Shah Rukh Khan and cricket hero Sachin Tendulkar.

This transformation was clear in the movie. The "hero" of the movie was a kid who enjoyed learning for learning's sake - to discover & invent, despised learning by rote - the curse of India education for decades, and goes on to teach kids. And yes, he gets the girl (the one in the orange Sari above).

Education, Education, Education
Nandan Nilekani talks about this at length in his book Imagining India - that India has a demographic dividend but for it to pay off, the country must invest in education. Whether the government is doing this well or not, the individuals definitely are. As the over-the-top melodramatic scenes depicted with tongue-in-cheek humor in the movie show, the 3 kids come from diverse economic backgrounds with the 2 poorest coming from families where there biggest (and probably only investment) is in the future of their kids. This is true in America too - I know of several families where college education is where all the savings go. But in India, 2 trends have made this remarkable - 15 years ago, most colleges were government run and so you either got in (1 in 1000) or you had to go attend a lame school teaching you curricula that was relevant 30 years ago. Today, there are private schools that will cost you an arm and a leg but teach you what you want to learn - computers, telco, management skills - and in English.

The aspirations have changed too. In two ways, with a diverse (and somewhat less noticed in the west) economy - Indian students no longer are confined to careers in medicine and engineering but can go be newscasters, photographers, animators, storytellers ... and earn a decent living doing that. Secondly, the poorer sections of the society are no longer willing to live with words like fate & destiny but are doing all they can to change it - by sending their kids to the best schools they can afford - which is far worse than most schools here but better than no education at all.

Family and Friends
Christmas is a great time to reflect on the year gone by, and as I watched this movie with a group of closest friends - I felt blessed and grateful. I remembered my IIT buddies from days at Kharagpur (India) where we had little in terms of conventional comforts - 100 degrees heat in summer was common with no air-conditioning (except in computer labs), erratic water supply, and dorm food nightmares. But we had friends, lots and lots of them. The bonds we formed are till this day some of the closest.

So as I close out this year, I am thankful to IIT for the education it gave me, the friends I found there, the friendships and hospitality of my adopted country (thank you North Carolina and California) ... and to my mentors. One of these days, I will write a post about the 7 mentors that changed my life.

Till then, go get yourself a (subtitled in English) copy of 3 Idiots (Netflix queue), or better still go watch it (with subtitles) at a movie theater near you.

Imagining India with Nilekani of Infosys

2009-12-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

I am on a 2 week annual vacation to India. I have often written about seismic changes in Indian reality, realty and perceptions. On this trip, I came across Nandan Nilekani's book - Imagining India. A thick tome but a book that captures how India has transformed, is transforming and the challenges and opportunities for its future transformation. Anyone looking to understand India must read this book.

I am not going to try to summarize the book but here are some key points that touched me and where I agree with him almost entirely:

The Demographic Advantage
Growing up in India, you were deluged with the message - India is overcrowded and getting worse - and that the reason we could not get a telephone connection in time (it literally took months if not years) was because there were too many people; the reason our roads were always poor was because there were too many people; the reason only 1 in 1000 people could get into an engineering school of choice was because there were too many people. And the solution was to prevent "The Population Bomb" from exploding. This did not make sense to me as I saw crowded cities like Delhi and Bombay offer better lifestyle than my grandparent's villages in Himalayan foothills. And, from the limited exposure to foreign media - I could see that places like Japan and New York had more people per square mile but did not have starving populations. Something was wrong with the picture.

In reality, the problem was not population but the system governing the population - a thinly veiled socialist rule that tried to optimize our lives every 5 years in the famous five year plans. Nothing much changed except the face of the politician that claimed to be solving all of our problems through the magic of socialism while fighting off evil capitalism and foreign hand in trade. This translated into very tangible effects on me and my family's middle-class existence:

No Books: While we were upper middle class by Indian standards, I distinctly remember that while I went to the best Indian private schools (some Catholic schools, some private run) - our textbooks were rather poor. And for a nerdy kid like me wanting to learn about everything from gravity to super nova, the only books I could lay my hands on were highly subsidized Russian books sold at Russian book fairs.
No Car: Our first car was a Fiat (that was based on a 1950's design) bought my father in 1988 for what was at that time his one year's salary. Imagine that - it would be the equivalent of an upper middle-class American paying $100,000 for a 2009 model car based on a 1960's design.
No Phones: When I went to undergraduate school 2000 miles from my hometown (like going from East Coast to West Coast for college), I had no communication with my family for entire semesters except a solitary phone call from a manned phone booth. These phone booths usually had 2 hour long lines and a 10 minute call could cost you hundreds of rupees.

I can go on and on about lack of basic medical care facilities that nearly killed me while studying at India's premier engineering school, or 'express' trains that took 28 hours to traverse 1500 kms with average delays of 4 to 12 hours.

Things are Better

Today, everything has changed and while India is far from perfect (or even functional) - its like India went from a 1900s America to 1950s America in 15 years in stead of 50. That's quite an achievement.

This transformation is creating massive opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid. These range from somewhat well-known $2,000 Tata car to small innovations like single use shampoo packets that cost $0.10 (ten cents). The impact of a ten cent shampoo or detergent for cleaning clothes is not to be underestimated. It transforms lives by giving the poor dignity.

Telco

If I had to pick two industries that have transformed the most and probably had the greatest impact on lives of people - it would be telecom and banking.

India went from 5 million in 1991 (mostly landlines) to over 500 million telephones (mostly mobile). In a nation of about 1 billion people, that means teledensity increased 100x. While these statistics are amazing, the impact on people's lives is even more so.

My Neighborhood Electrician

Everytime my Dad needed an electrician for an odd job around the house, till 10 to 15 years ago - he would walk over to the neighborhood shopkeeper that sold and repaired transistor radios and televisions and had a few people on his payroll. He would dispatch one of his men and collect the fees from my Dad. The electrician that actually fixed the wiring or repaired our television (yes, the socialist era TVs needed fixing on a regular basis) would get to keep a very small percentage of the fees.

Today, the electrician does not work for the middleman. He has more than one mobile phone and we simply dial him directly. He shows up promptly, charges us a more reasonable fee and gets to keep all of it. This has at least 3 beneficial effects:

No middleman means he gets to keep 100% of revenue and not 20% to 50%. This essentially at least doubles his income.
Being able to respond to calls while working, he claims he now visits 2 to 4 times more customers a day.
We, the customers, get immediate and personalized service which is greatly more accountable.

So, the electrician that was making about $25 to $50 per month now makes $500 to $1000.

All of this is changing millions of lives. Watch Hans Rosling's TED India talk to see how rapidly this change is happening.

And watch the following video to see India's glorious technological past - water harvesting techniques perfected hundreds of years ago showcasing great engineering feats.

Weird Myths in Business - Guest Post by Steve Greene

2009-11-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons its fun to work at salesforce.com is the extremely creative, talented people that are willing to question absurdities that other companies quietly accept.

Steve Greene, a colleague and our vice president of program management and Agile development put together some myths that many of us are easily led into believing. See how many you believe. I found out that I was behaving like I believed in a few.

View more presentations from Steve Greene.

Windows 7 Year Gap and Why They Can't Catch Up

2009-11-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Finally, Windows 7 is out and reviews are mixed but better than Vista - generally seen as vast improvement over Vista (which was accepted by Steve Ballmer as work in progress or worse). But this is not what this post is about. Even if Microsoft built products that were really good with killer features, it would still lag behind many competitors by up to 7 years.

The problem is Cloud Computing. If you look at some of the features Microsoft plans to release with Microsoft Outlook 2010 next year, they are pretty cool - conversations like GMail, search like Xobni, etc. Pretty awesome stuff. But when will users get to see this new product on their work and home computers - at least 3 or 4 years out. And so, if Microsoft recognized a killer feature like 'converstaions' in Gmail, and decided to add it to the product last year (2008), the product will be released in 2010 and by the time people replace their PCs and corporations adopt the latest as 'standard' - it will be 2013 to 2015 for many. Many of us are still running Windows XP 8 years after release (released 2001) even on new machines.

This is a huge problem for Microsoft. And why can't they break out of it? The one time selling model which collects all license fee upfront. Ideally, Microsoft would keep enhancing its products continuously offering new features (like cloud vendors of today do) enhancing the customer experience and keeping it fresh. But then no one would upgrade. So you are stuck 'creating demand' for your product upgrade by lagging behind. It works when you are the only game in town, and everyone else is bound by the same rules. Enter Cloud Computing.

Cool Outlook 2010 Search Feature: Too late to catch up with GMail?

Imagine if your existing Outlook started supporting faster search or conversations - wouldn't that change your perception of the products and the company?

So here is the conundrum for Microsoft - even if they respond to consumer demands and push out great features, they will still lag cloud computing vendors by 7 years. May be that's why they call it Window 7 - it has features that are frankly 7 years too late!

And this problem is not limited to Microsoft. Oracle and SAP face the same challenge from cloud vendors like Salesforce.com, Taleo, Omniture, SuccessFactors,etc. Fusion has been half-way done since 2006, and there are no signs of when customers will actually get to buy and implement - and then the users will finally see features like integrated search and analytics.

What do you think?

Update: Vinnie asks is Microsoft is winning the battle and losing the war, along similar lines.

Berkeley Haas >PLAY Conference, Digital Media, Diwali and Obama

2009-10-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

I know that's a mouthful of a title - but let me help connect the dots (or clouds).

I will be talking about Cloud Computing, educating the future CEOs about the distinction between water vapor (thanks to on-premise CEOs), vapor products (thanks traditional vendors), private clouds (thanks disharmony) and real cloud computing!

Its a great day outside. Its Diwali - a show of lights celebrating all that's good - but Obama can explain this better using digital media than I can using words.

So as I venture to engage in a discussion on Cloud Computing at the Digital Media Conference, I can't help but wonder how else - Cloud (Youtube) and Digital Media (Online Video) would Obama be able to reach a micro audience (okay a billion people but only 2% of the population in USA) without the two - Cloud & Digital Media.

Look forward to talking to a lot of young (and old) MBA students and others attending >PLAY.

http://www.playconference.org/panels.html#panel6

Write me your thoughts.

Cloud Computing is Difficult For CEOs To Understand

2009-10-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

Over the last week, there has been a resurgence in problems very intelligent people are having with the term 'Cloud Computing '. This problem is likely to worsen this week. So, what's going on ?

Upton Sinclair used to say- "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

I think - "It is difficult to get an on-premise CEO to understand something, when his maintenance revenue depends upon his not understanding it!", call it the Cloud Computing Sinclair Corollary.

For the rest of us that don't have that problem, its rather easy - an application that works on the internet without requiring you to install lots of software or buy hardware.

If you need further help, here is a video (hat tip Vinnie):

Next time you hear a CEO explain how he's finding it difficult to differentiate between decades of on-premise software and hardware, and cloud computing - give him a hug. He just can't understand - the maintenance revenue prevents it.

India Investment & Enterpreneurship Event with Mayfield VC and Former Minister

2009-10-07T21:17:00.001-07:00

I wanted to extend an invitation to the blog readers and discount (code: INDIA for 50% off) to an interesting upcoming event for those looking to do business in India.

On October 12th, 2009, join key influencers, and opinion makers at "Advantage India." Explore Investment, Business, and Career opportunities in India. Discuss industry issues candidly, debate new ideas and trends, ask questions, and share opinions. Network with technology executives, venture capitalists, investors, and intellectuals.

An award-winning journalist, scholar, politician - Dr. Arun Shourie, Former Minister, Information Technology, Disinvestment and Communications, India;
India's (Former) Lead Banker who co-chaired a G20 Working Group - Dr Rakesh Mohan, Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India;
The Silicon Valley VC who has the Midas touch - Mr Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund;
One of the most influential investors in technology - Mr. M.R Rangaswami, Co-Founder, Sand Hill Group.
V.I.P. Guest: Mr. Jamshyd Godrej, Managing Director, Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd.

If you are interested in what's happening in India and how to do business there, I certainly recommend this panel discussion.

More information here. Location: PlugNPlay Tech Center, Sunnyvale (Monday Oct 12th at 6.30pm).

Go Check it Out

2009-09-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Its so easy to build websites on Force.com Sites - and its free.

I usually don't post stuff related directly to my work but I am really excited about this capability and the easy to understand video our marketing team put together.

No More Foreign Engineers and Scientists in Healthcare

2009-09-05T21:52:00.001-07:00

This is a plea to President Obama and the Congress. Let us prevent foreign engineers and scientists from working at any healthcare related business - healthcare machine makers (X-Rays, CT-Scanners, etc.), software makers (diagnostics etc.), pharmaceutical reserearch and many others. After all, none of them are certified & regulated engineers and scientists - we can't trust their foreign degrees and the decision makers who hire them - these people could end up degrading our healthcare and hurting, even killing millions of us Americans.

After all, we don't let foreign doctors practice medicine on our people - that would just let our poor people get cheaper healthcare over Skype from a doctor in Phillipines or India for about $5 to $10. We need regulation and stricter standards that the union (AMA) and federal government decides - not to create an artificial scarcity of doctors and keep pays and costs sky high - but to protect us!

Yes, we need the same kind of regulation for engineers and scientists. We need some computer science union like IEEE to be able to regulate who writes the website for a Google Health or Microsoft Healthvault.

Only by having regulation, can we help our scientists and engineers in healthcare make respectable salaries ($300K and higher) rather than the globally competitive market rates. (Learn more about how AMA helps do the same for doctors here.)

This madness must stop, now!

(For those challenged in art of humor, this is a sarcastic post to comment on how we have created an inflated cost structure and restricted supply by letting a union decide who can diagnose my flu.)

Facebook and Twitter - What Are the Killer Apps All About?

2009-07-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

Facebook - the future of social networking. Twitter - the future of future of social networking, and of media. You know the story of how these are changing everything from how teenagers communciate, tweeners look for and are denied jobs to how those on Social Security are turning to Social Neetworking.

We know the commonly discussed reasons why Facebook and Twitter rock:

Strong Connections: Stay in touch with people frequently. Know when they change jobs, or even just change at night to go to bed. Unlike email where people can drift away after a while of no direct contact - in the world of Facebook and Twitter, unliess you explicitly de-friend someone, its forever. More than marriage.
Loose Connections: Look Ma, no strings. Have your connections and ignore them too. Unlike email, you have no obligation to answer my updates or tweets. Live and let live but watch.
Asynchrnonous: Unlike IM and chat rooms, where we all have to be there together to chat - in Twitter and Facebook - its like a chatroom except you don't have to be connected simultaneously. Geeks call it async communication.
Synchronous & Real-time: I am sure you are noticing a trend here - the benefits of Facebook & Twitter emanate from both properties and their corresponding anti-properties. Stephen Hawking will shoot me now. But, Twitter & Facebook do update my status page in (almost) real-time as you tweet or update your Facebook.
Mobile: Its on mobile. iPhones. 'nuf said.
Discovery: Discover friends. Friends of friends. Strangers with funny pictures. Creeps. You get the idea.

But I think many, if not all, of these attributes are also true of your email & im (short for instant messaging). After all, by using a combination of email and im - I can write to you in a disruptive manner requiring real-time response or can write to you in a non-desruptive manner. Mailing lists, chat rooms, blogs all round out the other many modes of communication. Then, what makes Facebook and Twitter special?

What is it about Facebook and Twitter?

I suggest that the key reason Facebook (and to a lesser extent Twitter) are so popular is because of the following:

No Spam: Since only selected friends who I have accepted as part of my network (or have chosen to follow on Twitter) can invade my inbox (or Wall) - your Facebook and Twitter feeds don't include the following- Nigerian Uncle leaving a Million Dollars, Male Enhancement Magic Pills, Canadian Drugs, and Hot Nannies. This functionality can also be achieved in email if you actively maintain a white list (a list of people that you always accept email from) and send all email not from the white list to trash. Essentially, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter help us create Gated Communities.
But its Coming: This was true so far. But as with all new modes, eventually man (and monkey) figure out a way to use the machines for un-intended purposes. A Canadian man was recently fined over $800 Million for compromising Facebook users' accounts and then using them to spam. Twitter search will slowly become worse as more fake online identities get created and watching #IranElection as the news developed made me realize that spam is here on Twitter.

So while Faceboook and its ilk have many features and functions that keep us logged in for hours- its the 'gated community' feel that provides an escape from the spam hell that my Yahoo! mail and other email accounts of yore have become; that I value the most.

What do you think? Leave a comment here or follow me and talk to me at http://www.twitter.com/anshublog