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I spoke with a group of investors last week about the importance of the emerging field of platform technology. They were interested in investing in a company that was looking for additional late round funding and they wanted to know a few things. What is the market for this new technology? Who will buy it? Isn't the market already saturated with applications and application technology?...

In its short life, Salesforce.com has garnered more than its fair share of publicity, thanks in no small measure to the activities of its founder, CEO and chairman, Marc Benioff. Benioff may be the 21st century high technology answer to P.T. Barnum, a colorful figure in an industry that has more shades-of-grey personalities than McDonald's has ways of stacking burgers, buns and lettuce...

"I can understand building an open-source operating system," Beagle Research principal analyst Denis Pombriant told CRM Buyer. The difference between that and an open-source application, he explained, is that it is far more difficult to recoup overhead costs incurred in the subsequent implementation and integration of the system...

Salesnet is not the only company trying to grab market share from Salesforce.com. It will not be easy to dislodge the market leader from its perch, but it is doable with the right strategy, said Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research "There are a lot of vendors out the...

I have been wracking my brain for an adequate metaphor to describe the situation that has developed in the CRM world and in enterprise software in general ...

It was no surprise thatIBM andSAP joined ranks to promote SAP'son demand CRM product a day after Oracle's acquisition ofSiebel concluded ...

Google has been in the news a lot lately and not for the kinds of things that the financiers on Wall Street like to see. Last week it was revealed that Google, alone among majorsearch engine companies, is resisting a government request to provide a representative sample of searches to help Washington better understand if its anti-pornography laws are working. It was also revealed that the company is editing its search results for the Chinese market -- helping to keep embarrassing or controversial information from Chinese searchers...

Have you noticed the "dial 'O' for a human" movement gathering steam? One related manifestation is the clever set of ads put out by Citibank for its credit cards. You may have seen the ads showing a man calling for service and navigating through the tragedy that is the automated call response system so many companies use ...

In fact, it is the main reason he established the award, explained Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research and a regular contributor to CRM Buyer "It's important to continuously explore what are the involving areas of the front office," he told CRM Buyer. "As new busines...

I was the guy standing on the sidewalk the other day outside the hotel in San Francisco where Salesforce.com was announcing the birth of AppExchange. You couldn't miss me -- I was the analyst with an empty Starbucks cup panhandling for new ideas ...

It's that time of year again when we announce who the WizKids are. Confused? It's our annual award to emerging companies and companies with emerging innovations. When you get right down to it, we track new and cool stuff and report on it ...

At a Siebel user group meeting held in Boston last October, "everyone was upbeat, with people saying they wanted to go out a winner," recalled Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research "At that point, many people didn't know if they were going to stay or take a package and...

A few weeks ago, I started writing about what I see as the post-CRM world. I think it is becoming clear that front-office automation is moving past the definition of CRM that we have become accustomed to. As I look around the industry, there is a perceptible difference between what software is and what it does, which goes beyond CRM ...

I was doing research for a book a few weeks ago when a friend recommended that I re-read Geoffrey Moore's Inside the Tornado and I am glad she did. Tornado has to be about 10 years old now which puts it in a very interesting historical perspective. It's old enough to have looked back on the amazing growth of companies like HP and its printer business, Oracle, Intel, and even DEC. But by the same token, enough time has gone by to show how useful many of Moore's concepts were in forecasting the emergence of the CRM market...

My greatest impression of the "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles" is that they are no help in planning or making predictions. Although it has been a while since I read an accounting text book, I seem to recall statements of assumptions like: "There will be no war. Inflation will be moderate. There will be no recession." Of course that's not reality and, in my opinion, if such are your assumptions at the get go, then all you are really doing is failure-proofing your work. Later on you can look rather sage when you say, "Don't blame me, remember the assumptions!" Whatever...

Salesforce.com didn't get mad, they got even. Going after their own weaknesses with Sforce and broadening their application footprint with Appforce and ApplicationExchange shows Salesforce.com doesn't get mad at enterprise vendors who have tried unsuccessfully to compete, they get even by attacking their own weaknesses. Kudos to Denis Pombriant for his great coverage of this area of the market as well...

Ever notice how these year end reviews and a pundit's previous forward-looking prognostications rarely synch up? Of course not! Analysts and pundits are great at predicting the future, but lousy at coming back a year later to review how they did. Well, I'm different. I don't care if I was wrong last year as long as I was funny. Here are a few of my prognostications from 2004 and how they look today...

Let's talk about the newspaper industry. No. On second thought, they're just a special case of media, so let's talk about media in general -- and CRM. You wouldn't know it by looking at this Web site which is plenty high-tech, dynamic, and customer focused, but the Web sites of many media outlets are pretty poor and indicate that their owners lack much in the CRM department...

It's time to start thinking about what comes after CRM ...

I have always believed that I shouldn't use this bully pulpit to settle personal scores and that is why the vendor in this story will remain anonymous. But this is such a delicious story about the limits of CRM that I couldn't resist at least bringing it up ...