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."
Yeah well... (Score:5, Informative)
In addition to their cloudy-cloudness offerings, they've been anti-MS in other respects, directing some nastiness at microsofts old CRM solution.
Oddly, their doc merges only work right with IE, and they're usually about 3 versions behind on working Office plugins.
Not the finest development team on earth, in my opinion.
Re:Yeah well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The whole "Do everything in the cloud" idea was tried a decade ago and it bombed then and it'll bomb even worse now.
I wouldn't try to take that to the bank if I were you. In 2002 Gmail didn't even exist. Today, for massive herds of private individuals it is the only email they know. And corporate adoption is going exponential. And Gmail is far from the only player in that space.
If you wanted to make a case for "the cloud won't completely kill the PC" I'll buy that, but from where I sit, the day where more email as sent through cloud interfaces than PC clients is probably already here.
Tablets VS PC... daddy will use the P
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, get back to us when tablets have more than 64GBs of storage, and don't need to be tethered to a wifi to get things done.
Some of us have lasted through the net wars between Netscape / mainframe-style thinking and Microsoft / local-machine style thinking. Microsoft, like it or not, won, because owning the last mile is what's important when designing a killer app. Stuff on the net versus local, local wins, at the end of the day. Just watch.
And you may ask, why is MS trying the net approach now, when they
Re: (Score:2)
>Yeah, get back to us when tablets have more than 64GBs of storage, and don't need to be tethered to a wifi to get things done.
Wireless connectivity is almost ubiquitous at this point. I have high-speed connectivity at home and at the office. The era of the desktop computer is rapidly drawing to a close. The cloud is obviously supplanting it. I wouldn't be surprised to see the desktop PC completely replaced within 5 years by a tiny Apple TV-sized box you plug into your monitor. It'll communicate wit
Re: (Score:2)
>even the ARM holdings group has been talking about having "dark silicon"
'Dark silicon' is a stupid idea. Going down that route is just evidence that you're too stupid to do power management correctly on chip.
BPM (Bad Power Management): Have a power controller that turns things on and off as they are needed.
GPM (Good Power Management): On chip units know when they are needed and turn themselves on and off as required.
You simply cannot get BPM to scale with complexity. You hit a complexity wall because a
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Yeah well... (Score:4, Insightful)
You make a lot of bold claims there, but they are obviously controversial and you haven't cited any actual data to back them up.
For example, why do you think AMD has only months left? They made a loss in Q3 and they're cutting their workforce, but they still took over $1B in revenues and have over 10,000 employees. That's almost certainly enough scale to survive a bad year or two while they reposition, which is exactly what their CEO said they would be doing on their Q3 call.
And I don't buy your argument about tablets replacing PCs at all. Tablets serve very well as a convenient portable information consumption device. For households that don't have any greater needs than that, sure, maybe they can do without a PC. But anyone who is doing anything creative is going to need way more capabilities than any tablet offers. That includes almost all business use and anyone who likes to send messages that don't fit in a txt msg or tweet, just to name two obvious and huge groups where tablets have no chance of replacing PCs. In short, saying tablets will make PCs obsolete would be like saying cell phones or games consoles would make PCs obsolete. Those things didn't happen, because we're talking about different tools for different jobs.
For the same reason, trying to push UI paradigms that have been reasonably successful on small, primarily consumption-based mobile devices onto a general purpose PC that is also used for creative work seems like a poorly thought-out idea to me. Between that and the evidence from Vista that people won't upgrade to a new version of Windows just because it's the new version of Windows any more, I'm skeptical about the course Microsoft seems to be charting with Windows 8.
Re: (Score:2)
First claim is the big investment houses expect it to fail. It is not investment grade anymore...
We have to be careful with terms here. Many things can be a bad investment at their current share price, but sound as an ongoing business.
...the data shows an upcoming bankruptcy.
Which data is that? That's really what I'm looking for here.
Second, if people can run Office and all their apps on a tablet with a keyboard cover they will do so. Why carry 2 things?
But this is exactly the argument I don't buy when it comes to tablets.
I work in software development, so admittedly my requirements are greater than average. Still, I have over 10 megapixels of desktop in the monitors on my desk, and I frequently use all of it at once and wish I had more. That desk is also home t
Re: (Score:2)
Intel has the best fabrication facilities on earth, bar none. If they can't make it selling x86 chips, they could always open the floodgates to manufacturing ARM-based chips for Apple. There's more than enough demand there to soak up all of Intel's excess manufacturing capacity. It would dent their margins, but they'd still be enormously profitable.
If PC sales continue their recent tailspin, Intel may be left with no choice. They're counting on Atom-derived low-power x86 chips running Windows to save th
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: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.
Re: (Score:2)
Workday is doing the same thing. They use MySQL. Dave Duffield learned his lesson this time around. Back when he was running PeopleSoft the majority of their customers used an Oracle database as they still do now. They also licensed a bunch of other third party tools such as COBOL (MicroFocus), Crystal Reports and SQR. Any application vendor that has an Oracle database at the heart of it is eventually going to get screwed by Oracle. That's just how they operate.
Re: (Score:3)
If the adventure fails it won't be Postgresql's fault; it's a dandy little program. They should welcome some gotchas in the migration, it will give the PG dev. folks some more targets.
Hell, with any luck, Salesforce's "huge PostgreSQL project" will involve contributing patches and code upstream to the main project. But I'm not sure I'm ready to bet on it. Salesforce has never given me the impression of being a company that really gives a shit about technology. Their conferences are all about "sell, sell, sell!" and "transform your business!" and other management bullshittery. Whenever they announce that they're launching some amazing new technology that's an industry first, it's usually
Re: (Score:2)
Their conferences are all about "sell, sell, sell!" and "transform your business!" and other management bullshittery.
Well, to be fair, their software is all about how companies can do more "sell, sell, sell!"
But yes, Salesforce doesn't give a shit about technology. Which is why I consider this move away from Oracle a huge adventure: it's not something that Salesforce is used to doing, and will require them doing a rework of the internals of their entire core product offering.
Re: (Score:2)
They probably felt like they needed to do a rework anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe that is why they are in the S&P 500, they sell to management in a language they understand ?
Re: (Score:3)
And open-source is where business wants to invest,
If only. Most big businesses (in non-technical industries) still avoid open source like they would office furniture made of hemp. Or my employer does, anyway. If it doesn't come with an MS/IBM/Oracle/Apple/etc. sticker on it, procurement won't touch it.
I like your optimism, though.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Oracle is much less relevant than open-source. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If you're into "a few hundred terabytes", you're not dealing with Oracle anyways (or even SQL) because you've already hit the query performance wall around 10 terabytes and had to look for alternatives, such as NoSQL and Hadoop and Cloudera.
Another moron CEO (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows (and, by extension, desktop computing) is irrelevant because people have iPads. Seriously, this guy is completely out of touch. It may be great for the CEO who never has to do any real work with a computer, but an iPad is wholly unsuitable for anything other than Angry Birds and checking your Facebook. It's a media consumption device, not something used to create and manipulate spreadsheets. The fact that "Windows is irrelevant" because of "the cloud" speaks to his complete misunderstanding of t
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.
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Informative)
Why should I need a specific OS to join a domain?
Because "joining a doman" is an OS specific way of networking. By having domains a company has already said they don't want OS independent networking but rather what the advantages of an integrated stack of services.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But dude, it's going to be okay, they plan on outsourcing IT to the "cloud" when they institute BYOD to work, thus hitting both birds with one stone. It's the "cloud"...it's magic!
Meanwhile, the recently laid-off IT staff will be borrowing from relatives to short their former company's stock, figuring that they can't possibly last 6 months.
Re: (Score:2)
It is unsupportable. There isn't going to be meaningful support. When Microsoft first moved into the enterprise with the Windows for Workgroups. IT didn't concern itself with desktops, they worked on the mainframe system. It was only when crucial data began to be on the desktop applications that the company tasked IT, and BYOD disappeared.
Re: (Score:2)
Naah, it's not so bad. As long as you get to choose your own adventure.
I spent a few years being IT gunther for a medium company that sells cell phones. Every few weeks, Cell Phone Dept. Lady would bring me a random newfangled device and want to get her email and such on it.
Do you: Make it work (if so, go to 3) or make it not work (go to 7)?
3: Really not so bad. Spend a bit of time understanding the new widget and its quirks, and then just make it work, and then spend a whole lot more time explaining to
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes where they replaced integration incompatibility with service contract versioning problems and monolithic broker based messaging instead!
I've been through both phases as a solution architect - same turd rolled in different glitter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, unless Windows 8 was designed around tablets and Angry Birds rather than desktops and laptops. MS would never consider taking their (inexplicably) successful desktop OS and dumbing it down to work on devices where they have nearly 0% market share and have the status of has-been, or never-were. That'd be an unmitigated disaster, no company would be so foolish.
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
What enterprise do you work for? One without:
BI software that integrates with Excel
Exchange
Sharepoint for document management
No universal communications
etc...
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Sharepoint division does $2b a year in sales. It currently is just shy of 150m licenses. So yes people use it.
BI frequently makes use of rich clients and those are often written in Excel (VBA). As far as the analytics, they are often passed off to Excel for responsiveness. Rich client is not dad.
As far as getting rid of Microsoft dependencies, that's may be true. But Munich has been at it for a dozen years without success. It seems like once you have a Microsoft culture the cost of moving off one
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
LoB
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the reality: a lot of people don't need a full computer. Their corporate life is either spent consuming content, or it is spent talking to someone and jotting down some quick notes.
Yes, there are engineers who program and business analysts who create spreadsheets (although what excel is being used for is a whole other horror story....). But the majority of management, all of sales, and much of marketing and PR is focused on consuming content and creating small, simple chunks of content. iPads are perfect for that. I know (second-hand) how much work is done on iPad, because all that work consists of checking email, writing quick emails, and pulling content off of the corporate intranet. From that perspective, he is right. Is he overselling his case? He sure is - then again, every statement by competent CEOs should be assumed to be nothing but advocating for the company, regardless of the reality of the situation.
For me, windows 8 is going to flop because it's the wrong OS for the wrong device from the wrong company: the desktop needs a full UI designed for creating content, not just consuming content. It also has to be efficient in that process, and not give them an interface designed for consuming content on a 4 inch screen. Finally, Microsoft is not a device and services company, no matter how much Ballmer wants to believe that. It is a business software/services company with a consumer division grafted on top of it. It might want to refocus itself, before it loses even its business clout.
Re: (Score:3)
Loses their business clout to whom? Who is even close to providing the range of services Microsoft provides?
As for the Windows 8 interface it is obnoxious for Win32 apps but does quite nicely for Metro application. And Metro is fine for creating content creation application. The change to Windows 8 just drives a change in hardware design that allows for a change in application design.
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: (Score:3)
Spoken as someone who has never written a major sales proposal, the ones that run 50+, 100+, 200+ pages for multi-million dollar projects. They (at least, mine) include annotated pics and screenshots, a layout with stylesheets, a TOC... and need to look good. And are you assuming the powerpoints materialize out of thin air ?
I'd love for a web app to do what I need in a nice way. Haven't seen anything that comes even close
Re: (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 easi
Re: (Score:3)
The majority of youtube videos now created are made on mobile devices
Awesome! I can't wait for the new YouTube Video category at next year's Oscars.
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.
News flash: Most Americans don't lease a new car every year anymore, either. It must be because they're using mopeds now instead of cars.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In addition to this we have open standard for contacts, email, pictures, web pages. An Apple or Android device is going to leverage those open standards
Re: (Score:2)
Telling a new prospective hire that they can't use their tablet is a not a great way to hire the best.
Wow, that has to be the most out of touch thing I have ever read!
Re: (Score:2)
Are you hiring people to play angry birds?
If the work should be done on a tablet, the company should provide the tablet. This allows standardization across your infrastructure, and sends the impression that you support your employees getting your work done for you.
Don't cheap out and refuse to provide a $400 tool to a $80k/year employee just because they might bring it themselves if you do. A professional will bring in his own tools if they're not provided, because he is a professional and cares about get
Re: (Score:2)
Given the above scenar
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have a friend who works for a large bank. He's in charge of developing a new internal application, and the execs insisted that it be an HTML5 app so that it would be compatible with their shiny new iPads. This is quite different from even 5 years ago, where there were lots of native Windows-only corporate applications within the bank and everyone thought this was completely acceptable. You may disagree with their reasoning for moving away from Windows, but regardless, most internal corporate applications
Re: (Score:2)
Windows (and, by extension, desktop computing) is irrelevant because people have iPads. Seriously, this guy is completely out of touch.
But it's true. You and I are not the general public and the general public at large does not need Windows PCs, because they do no actual work for which one is truly required. Your argument would apply if people genuinely mostly used their PCs to create things, but this is not the case in reality. Sad, I know, but it's true.
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Stagnant for decades?
In the 1990s relational databases had just grown powerful enough to take over from the CODASYL / Network databases which allowed for data abstraction and substantially cut development and maintenance costs.
In the 2000s relational database had just grown powerful enough to offer additional levels of abstraction: data warehousing and decision support was mostly non existent.
In the 2010s it appears we are moving to databases 4-5 orders of magnitude larger than those old CODASYL type. A re
Re: (Score:2)
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 wh
Re: (Score:2)
Apple completely understands managing resources centrally, they just choose to interpret it as under *their* control.
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: (Score:3)
This is the typical opinion here I know, but it's all like the doomsayer with the board that reads "the end of the world is nigh" just because it's different. You do a disservice to everyone.
For those of us who have actually used Windows 8 for a bit (i.e. installed it rather than watched someone whinge about it on youtube), you will find a "singularity moment" where you go "holy shit I get this now". It's somewhere between when you're listening to a piece of music you flick open the charms bar and sent it
Re: (Score:2)
"This is the typical opinion here I know, but it's all like the doomsayer with the board that reads "the end of the world is nigh" just because it's different. You do a disservice to everyone."
End of the world, no. There's still Win 7, and for those hapless 3rd World pirates, there's still Win XP. Win 8 is simply, let's just say, off the mark. But one more of this, and it'll be the end of the world. For Microsoft, that is.
Here's another thing about Win 8. It's probably the least future-proof among the major
Re: (Score:2)
Spoken as if the Sony Glasstron [wikipedia.org] is something new.
I don't know the interface for Google Glass because I haven't used it myself, but here is my prediction: Whatever the fuck it is that might be useful about it, is not yet useful because operating systems and applications (as we know them) are shit for that sort of interface.
Currently, as it stands, as far as I can tell: It's all shit for VR headsets. It always has been.
Case in point: Why would I want the dock at the bottom of my view? It will cover up th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Windows 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
What Mr. Benioff is forgetting is that Windows 8 is a throw-away version of Windows. Big business is too busy moving to Windows 7 from XP right now, they were going to skip Windows 8 no matter how good or bad it was! Microsoft has a long history of playing catch-up, and then overtaking the competition long after the competition thought they had the game sewed up. Windows 8 may be a colossal dud, but don't count Microsoft out yet.
Re: (Score:2)
It will be a dud like Vista...oh wait...Vista was a commercial success...I forgot.
Re: (Score:2)
It will be a dud like Vista...oh wait...Vista was a commercial success...I forgot.
"One more such commercial success [wikipedia.org], and we shall be undone."
Re: (Score:2)
I don't buy this idea that Microsoft would be so reckless as to risk their biggest product like that. The only other version of Windows that has been such a failure is Vista, and when Microsoft released that, they scrambled to push Windows 7 out the door ASAP to stop the backlash. It was an accident, and they're not dumb enough to try to make a corporate strategy out of repeating this accident.
You could argue that Windows Me was their other throwaway version, but when that happened, they had the NT line rea
Re: (Score:3)
I don't get where this "they scrambled to push Windows 7 out the door ASAP" bullshit keeps coming from. Kids who don't remember anything more than five years back? The time period between Windows Vista's release and Windows 7's release was approximately equal to the time period between Windows 98 SE's release and Windows XP's release. Except, from 98SE to XP, there was also both Windows ME and Windows 2000. From Windows Vista to Windows 7 there was... nothing (well, in the non-server space, which is all I c
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. We're still happily using XP, and when we switch, it'll be to Windows 7. I would never consider running mission critical systems on an OS that hasn't been out and pounded on for at least a few years. This whole insanity of having to have the latest and greatest is largely relegated to the consumer markets. The people with the deep pockets are business buyers, and
All within certain predictions (Score:2)
It has been a long time in evolving this way, but I think it is finally arriving to that point.
The days of the PC are coming to an end. The PC itself will still be around, of course, but it will be relegated to what is should have always been -- a data and service access device.
The thing is that Microsoft really seized into an opportunity by making itself the one main OS. We all watched as Microsoft built its Windows into what we see today. Protocol standards being embraced and extrended all over. The p
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.
Re: (Score:2)
That's why I expect Microsoft to bet on the cloud as well. When the only way to get the latest version of Office is to pay a $99 subscription for 1 year then the river money will come back a flowing!
Thanks to the walled garden by Apple and SaaS with SalesForce, Microsoft will happily jump onto the bandwagon.
Re: (Score:2)
My argument is that Windows 8, if it can success on tablets and phones, will never stand a chance. The public has already rejected those things due, in large part, to Microsoft's inability to commit to a platform other than PCs running on Intel chips.
EVERY Windows phone has been a failure. EVERY Windows handheld device has been a failure. The market shows very little interest in these devices and "compatibility with PC applications" is pretty low on the public's mind. If Windows8's best hope is in Mobil
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: (Score:2)
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. [...]
The so called Cloud could be useful, if the technology doesn't abuse the internet with an all or nothing mindset. However, since it's the business world's gold rush drooling dream of revenue streams to end all revenue streams, another "pay as you breathe model" worth mentioning is the time share [youtube.com].
Everyone in other places outside the office could have access to a computer; a mainframe with their dumb terminal. It's awesome--as the video will explains. (Warning. With all due respect to everyone from that era
Re: (Score:2)
Compared with an individual PC and a copy of Office, I'd agree that SaaS is a "pay as you breathe" model. But that's not where it becomes interesting.
Where it becomes interesting is if you're looking for industry-specific software. This quite often costs four or five figures for even a relatively small business and can come with annual maintenance costs that you pretty much have to pay whether you want to or not.
That's a lot of money to find once a year. But your customers don't pay in one big lump once a y
Re: (Score:2)
Similar economics apply to desktop software. Say an upgrade to the new version of Office costs $300. Ramping up a department of 100 workers, each with a copy of Office, would cost you $30,000. For a small business, that might actually force you to make a decision: Do we upgrade our software this quarter or do we install that new lighting we've been talking about? A subscription model might actually look attractive to you in that case, too -- which may be one reason why Microsoft is now offering Office in a
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Salesforce makes SQL access difficult (or impossible). They can switch to Postgres without changing their web platform and then open the DBs for reporting, read replication, and sell write access. SQL is still the power-tool of enterprise integration.
In the words of the great Bender... (Score:2)
The smartphone & tablet bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
Enjoy the smartphone & tablet bubble while it lasts, but CYA because you never know when it'll come suddenly crashing down. Over night, Apple will go from the king of all companies, to one that is painfully obviously over-valued with stock prices in a decline that seems like it won't ever end. And analysts will rant on about how obvious it was that Apple's non-diversified monoculture was such a bad idea, and claim they said so, before.
That's not to say smartphones or tablets will be going away... just that there's room and money for everyone ONLY while the segment is expanding like crazy. As soon as that growth even slows, the crunch will be sudden and extremely painful, as companies fall daily, and all the hype that helped keep accelerating the bubble suddenly does a 180 and fuels the crash even more quickly. And let's not forget, that the guys left for dead during the bubble will be revered by the business community for their stable strategy that didn't jump headlong into the hype.
Of course there will be plenty of cheap hardware at fire-sale prices to play with, for quite a while. And soon, the world will be restored to a much more sane place, where the distortion of the previous bubble is forgotten, and some other bubble starts growing.
Re: (Score:2)
There are many financial tools that will let you back up your rhetoric with cold, hard cash. I am curious about which one(s) you are taking advantage of in light of your contrarian views of the market.
BYOD, oh good! (Score:2)
It makes sense for sales reps (Score:2)
This makes sense for sales reps. Their job is to talk to people and convince them to buy. Maybe take the actual order. That doesn't require much input or local computing power, but it requires convenient access to catalog and customer data. This is a business application that maps well to small screen mobile devices.
Benioff is an idiot.... (Score:2)
Windows is going to be the dominant operating system in the corporate setting for many years to come. Yes, people will have their little smart phones and tablets but they cannot replace the power of a desktop computer - at least not today. I see people in meetings smugly walking in with their iPads only to quickly fumble trying to take notes on the thing. It's fine for looking at stuff, not so good for creating stuff.
Benioff takes a jab at Ellison every chance he gets. Can't say I blame him because Ellison
Re: (Score:3)
^^ I yet have to see a tablet that can keep up with twin octocores and a set of Quadros. Then again, that's technology that's used for real work.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but sales is a one time event. It's the support team/engineers/subcontractors/employees that create "real work" and keep said work.
GP's point is that Marc Benioff doesn't sell software for those people, so why should he care?
Re: (Score:2)
The real question is: is the service provider with whom you store your data more reliable than you or your IT team in providing stable data access? Everything else is just paranoia and habit.
Re:And the day the cloud goes down? (Score:4, Insightful)
The cloud service provider could be up, but if your internet connection is down you can't use the services.
In many countries the internet connectivity uptime is worse than internal server uptime when managed by a not too crappy IT team.
It's fine if the cloud services are for public facing operations - in which case the public user's internet connectivity is usually not your problem, they don't blame you if their connection is down.
Re:And the day the cloud goes down? (Score:4, Informative)
From experience (I used to work for a well known SaaS provider but left when I saw what an absolute state it was all in), the teenager who lives next door to you and plays WoW on his infested laptop is less likely to fuck up then an average SaaS provider. As per any business, their objective is to maximise profit and to do this, they take seriously big risks and hope the hell the string and sticky tape doesn't go snap. When it does, you have no recourse as there are contracts to protect the profit-mongering. Using a "service provider" as you call them is akin to shutting your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears and taking a whiz.
If you do your own IT in house, you have control over the standards and where your standards are implemented.
Re: (Score:3)
To put out a counter-point out: I've worked for two SaaS providers, and one where I had direct access to both our internal and the customer application and network information. The vast majority of cases, the issue was with the customer's network and application. In fact, at the first company, our service went down twice: when some moron dug up a fiber cable in Germany, and once when the company running our main data center decided to fuck up their routing table. At the second company, we had one major outa
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
But the reality is that BYOD does not take off
BYOD did take off. In 2008 Macs were used in a tiny percentage of companies outside of artistic departments. Today something like 30% have to support Mac. In 2008 companies had RIM smartphones that were centrally purchased. Today they have iPhones and Android often bought with subsidy. In 2008 companies that had tablets had specialized ones. Today over 20% of all companies have to support iPad in a semi-official way.
As for Apple, Apple doesn't want to
Re: (Score:2)
At my company we're building our application delivery model to work from anywhere on any device. You could run on a tablet, phone, computer running any OS. Thanks to Citrix.
Is it in production? If not, your company is in that interesting situation of building today products according to yesterday's vision of tomorrow.