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What a week. It's amazing how much news you can make by throwing around a few billion dollars. We found that out by observing the sound (though maybe not the fury) of SAP and Oracle placing billion dollar bets on the future outlines of the enterprise software industry ...

It is turning into a busy end of the year with the CRM and Software as a Service industries advancing on multiple fronts. So far, we've had Dreamforce and all of the announcements that went with it. SAP has announced SAP Business ByDesign, available in 2008, and last week made NetWeaver available by subscription too. Salesforce.com and SAP are doing a lot to define two very different strategies for the future of enterprise computing...

The big news when Saleforce.com released its latest version of what is hot in the CRM space -- Winter '08 -- was Force.com. The immediately understood subtext was that Salesforce.com had officially begun its migration to a platform on-demand company, launching the first salvo in what Denis Pombriant, managing principal of the Beagle Research Group, wrote could be the next platform wars...

Just a couple of weeks ago, two terms, on-demand and Software as a Service (SaaS), were used interchangeably -- it was truly a difference without a distinction -- but a lot has changed in a short time ...

During Dreamforce there was a panel discussion for media and the financial and industry analysts. Some of Salesforce.com's senior executives were there for a panel discussion, which included Chief Financial Officer Steve Cakebread, cofounder and Executive Vice President Parker Harris and Vice President of Marketing George Hu, as well as company CEO and founder Marc Benioff...

I saw Marc Benioff in New York just after Labor Day. He was in town for various business reasons and hosted a dinner for a group of customers, analysts and journalists ...

My last few columns have been focused on new technologies that are making their way into the broader CRM suite. Expanding the CRM suite has never been easier, as platform vendors like Salesforce.com provide all the capabilities necessary for innovative developers to add something to the ensemble. Here, I thought it might be fun to explore the flip side...

Dave Duffield, most famously the founder of PeopleSoft and now Workday, was giving a keynote presentation at the RightNow user conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., when it hit me. Duffield is about to become a kingmaker in the on-demand market ...

Back in the bad old days, before there was much available on the Internet, there were practically no useful information available about companies, their executives and their possible business problems ...

I'd like to continue on the idea of modernizing our sales processes. Part of this modernization has been the focus on de-spreadsheeting selling. As we all know it started with sales force automation, or SFA, but the trend is alive and well and, if anything, gaining momentum ...

The front office computing market continues to impress me despite the fact that I have been covering it for so long ...

Taking credit is something we human beings love to do even when we might not have a great deal to take credit for -- unless there's bad news and then no one wants to own up ...

"Apex Code and industry defining features like intelligent work flow and multi-instance development environment provide clarity to enterprise CIOs by enabling them to focus on innovation, not infrastructure," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal of Beagle Research There is...

It's just a hunch, but I think that NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson will not have the same problems with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) regarding his IPO (initial public offering) that Marc Benioff had a couple of years ago when he took Salesforce.com public ...

Over the last three weeks I have received an intensive course in what it means to be The Customer, and I really liked it ...

Ten years ago Joe Pine defined customer experience in "The Experience Economy" and as is typical for big ideas, it took several years for it to ferment and bubble up to the mainstream. During that time, it's been amazing to see how we've turned customer experience into something different from what I think Pine intended ...

On my way out of Fenway Park the other night, I found a credit card on the sidewalk -- an American Express platinum card to be specific. There was no big moment of indecisiveness on my part about what to do with the card because I would expect anyone finding one of my cards on the street to act responsibly and I expect you feel the same ...

Earlier this year, we did a study of attrition in the call center. We wanted to know why even good or great call centers have such persistently high rates of attrition, especially when on-boarding new agents. On-boarding is the process that starts with hiring and continues through training and the initial experience of dealing with customers ...

It's hard to avoid comparisons between Microsoft and Salesforce.com this week. While many see a zero sum game being played out in which Google plus Salesforce.com somehow equals a diminished Microsoft, I think there's more ...

As you may know, I have been writing about on-demand computing for close to 10 years. The other day a reader sent me an interesting e-mail that I think sums up what a lot of other people are thinking. The note reads, in part, "We've all read the same books, we all know who Clay Christensen is and none of this surprises us. So why are the big players letting themselves go down the same well-worn path?"...