Salesforce.com's Benioff Disses Windows 8, Oracle 182
An anonymous reader writes "Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is the latest to predict Windows 8 will be a disaster for Microsoft, but for a different reason than some others: he says that Windows is simply irrelevant in the new era of cloud computing and bring-your-own-devices (BYOD), which will become clear to corporate IT decision makers when they confront the upgrade decision. Of course, this conveniently dovetails with Salesforce's market position, so consider the source. Another interesting development is the growing rivalry between Benioff and his old boss Larry Ellison; Salesforce.com is a longtime Oracle shop, but they have just announced intentions to hire 40-50 PostgreSQL developers."
Oracle is much less relevant than open-source. (Score:4, Interesting)
And open-source is where business wants to invest, (even though business still wants to buy Real support).
Migrating away from Oracle to something like PostgreSQL is just being prudent while mitigating costs (and strategic risks).
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I'm firmly of the opinion that widespread BYOD is a disaster in the making. You're still going to have to provide your staff with the tools and resources to do their daily work, but now you have to do that on any number of different and incompatible systems. Ignoring the potential security implications, supporting that in any meaningful way is going to be extremely hard. And you can be damn sure that laptops with Windows 8 will be one of those devices, so no, it's not irrelevant.
regulatory hurdles (Score:2, Interesting)
Until Apple, and Google, or any other alternative device manufacturer actually understands the regulatory environment that all business operates under (and I do mean under), a traditional desktop/laptop experience, even if it is delivered virtually via something like Citrix, will be a requirement. Furthermore, the complete failure of Apple to understand the need to manage assets centrally, without Apple's interference, will keep them in the toy realm. No real business gets done on the iPad, regardless of what you fanbois believe.
Win 8 GUI is suffocating (Score:4, Interesting)
More than the absence of the Start button, the Win 8 GUI will suffer from its lack of visual breathing space. Yeah, there's still apparently a nice selection of wallpapers, better than the default you'd get with the OSx, but the Start screen itself suffocates you with its billboard-like tiles.
Win XP had this refreshing image of a rolling green field beneath a blue skiy, the promise of a weekend escape into the country. Now the same office worker looking at the Win 8 start screen will see nothing but the loud artificial colors of the city. Is it that why MS had called it The Metro? Because it resembled those gaudy billboards at a subway station competing for the rush-hour commuter's fleeting attention?
Re:Oracle is much less relevant than open-source. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that's the real news: seems that Benioff wants to slowly move away from giving one of his biggest competitors giant wads of cash every year. That's going to be one hell of an adventure.
All hail the new pay as you breathe model (Score:5, Interesting)
Salesforce don't like the whole pay for it once and keep it model. They like the pay once a month (SaaS) model. They are also pretty shitty at giving data back when you want it. You can have it but it's a bastard to get it out.
BYOD + Salesforce is a wet dream for them which is why they're spinning it like this.
Unfortunately, a blanket statement here: It's just a 100% fucking retarded model that needs to go to hell.
You no longer have control over your data (lock in, data protection, availability, regulatory requirements).
You can't access it reliably *all of the time* (network issues, "cloud" outages).
You don't always know where your data is (Data protection issues).
You purchase purely a portal device rather than a general purpose computer (control, availability).
Your support sucks (availability).
At the end of the day, your cost cutting results in loss of your data, poor availability, data protection issues and legal exposure. Also do you want your clap-infested users' devices plugged into your network, authenticating against your web applications? Are you sure your business can handle all that?
I'd take Windows 8 (not RT) with local storage over the above any day and put it in a corporate environment. Hell, I'd even buy an Oracle license over it.
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:2, Interesting)
Mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, and Androids are not just "media consumption devices", and in fact are enabling what is practically a golden era of user created content. That you don't see this does not mean it does not exist. People are doing everything from making their own movies to composing music and writing novels to photography and photo effects on mobile devices. The majority of youtube videos now created are made on mobile devices, and it scares "big content" that the little guy can now easily create content that was once the domain of people with deep pockets.
No, these are NOT just "consumption devices". They are allowing a new era of content creation, never mind a new era of social connectivity.
Windows increasingly IS irrelevant, no matter what you Microsoft apologists want to believe. Stick your head in the sand all you want: the sales numbers don't lie. The "traditional PC" sales fell 8% year over year last quarter, a trend that is predicted to accelerate over the next few years. Traditional PC companies are hurting as their profits are slashed by the popular shift to tablets and phones as replacements for what people used to do on PCs. People ARE shifting to mobile, no matter how you bleat about how that must not be happening. Sure, a few niche applications will remain PC-only, but for the majority of the market, a combnation of a phone and a tablet fills their needs much better than a finicky malware prone "beige box" PC.
Re:Yeah well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Interesting)
We have quite a few iPads at work... Along with Playbooks, iPhones, Android Phones, BB's, etc.
Playbooks are sitting on shelves and never used... I took one home for my daughter after it was on the shelf for 6 months and she barely uses it. So thats saying something. I never see people in meetings with their playbooks.. I do see the scattered person with their ipad. However, the vast majority still come to meetings with their laptops, even tho they have iPads. Myself included. Most of us also have keyboards for them which in my opinion makes them usable for "creating content".
I use my iPad for when i'm sitting around the house and when i'm on call. Its lighter and easier to carry around than my laptop and has a great battery life. I also use it when i'm at a conference to take notes, look things up, etc for the same reasons. If I want to get any real work done tho, I use my laptop/desktop.
I honestly don't see the take up with mobile devices even tho in reality (as you've said) most people don't need a full computer.
Re:All within certain predictions (Score:4, Interesting)
I can put it in different words. Microsoft empire needs money - more and more money every year to continue to look like a company with a bright future. They started well by selling software for PCs when each PC was sold for thousands of dollars. Private deals with major PC makers resulted in inserting MS into the food chain (the MS tax.) MS was able to sell incremental copies of software at zero cost - they didn't even have to copy the bits, OEMs did that for them!
However today computing is no longer a luxury. Computing devices became cheap. If the hardware of your tablet costs $99 you cannot slap a $150 Windows on top of that. Windows blatantly exhaused its food supplies. Sure, it keeps selling Windows, and it will keep doing so for another decade. But in the end if they do nothing they will retrace the steps of Kodak - and of buggy whip makers before that.
As I said, MS empire runs on money. But fewer money is available to them with every new day. The whole concept of Windows is getting old. MS can read the writing on the wall just fine. That's why MS is in panic mode. Win8 is a truly desperate attempt to try and lock up the tablet market. But as usual this is too little and too late. Android is winning in the industry, and iOS is picking up the luxury market. MS has no market left to insert itself into - and they don't seem to have new ideas to make a new market for themselves. The more MS flops the more it distances itself from its customers. Win8, for example, will not be accepted in the enerprise - not now, not ever - simply because Win8 offers nothing of value to engineers and researchers and coders.
The example of Kodak is actually fitting. Kodak lived off of the expensive film and chemistry, where you paid $1 for each printed photo. That was a nice racket while it lasted. But now I can buy a $10 SD card and take thousands of photos onto it - and, look, I can reuse the SD card once I'm done! The whole business model of Kodak collapsed almost overnight. MS's business model is still standing, but it is based only on two cash cows - Windows and Office. And the Office is largely standing on the back of Windows. Sales of PCs to businesses, with Windows, are not threatened - but sales to consumers are not just threatened, they are already against the wall. As businesses defer upgrades for cost reasons (it's not exactly an economic boom out there) MS starts seeing smaller profits, and in 2012 they posted the first loss.