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: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:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another moron CEO (Score:1, Informative)
Yes, our company went down this route, and what a load of bollocks it is.
I mean, Google docs is okay I guess, but why the fuck are things like strikethrough on the toolbar but not underline? Talk about epic usability fail, and that's before you consider the fact that sometimes it just breaks connection with Google's servers and just outright fucks up.
Even all that's ignoring the fact it's apps are missing a fuckton of everyday features from Office.
Besides, if the OS is now the browser where is my Visual Studio/NetBeans equivalent online? Why would I want a shitty web based equivalent of a terminal services client when I could just fire up a terminal services client?
Even at home web based games are still utter bollocks compared to install desktop games and web based media players still fail to let me access and manage my content in the way I want or offer the features I want. Even GMail well not too bad as web based mail clients go is a poor offering compared to Outlook where managing your mail and calendar is so so much quicker and easier.
Our operating system is now the browser... yeah, if you do nothing of any value whatsoever. Like the GP said, tablets are media consumption devices and nothing more, if that's all you do then sure you can chuck your desktop away, but if you want to do anything useful you better keep it around.
The idea that we've moved to a cloud based mobile world is a fucking joke, trust me. I work for a firm that's heavy on the mobile industry and I see so many daily fails because people have swallowed the bullshit, like the client that bought 100 iPads for their staff to use their new web based CMS with only to find the iPad has no support for the simple image upload functionality prevalent in web browsers - fixed in iOS6, shame their iPad 1s aren't getting iOS6 because Apple no longer support it.
There are some things I believe given time, and improvement mobile/cloud will replace over the next few years, but there are some things I think it will never replace, or at least, not in any near future. But now? cloud/mobile is like a big overhyped alpha test- a nice preview of what's coming, but nowhere near ready for prime time, the desktop has many years left until it is- and as I say, even then there are purposes for which it'll still be essential.
The only reason things like Salesforce have been succesful is because there was no decent quality competing desktop equivalent before it's creation. That isn't true with office software, games, development environments, and so on - good quality desktop software still blows web based and mobile software out the water right now. About the closest option I've seen for replacing any part of Office for example, is LucidChart as a replacement for Visio, and even that's not quite there yet.
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:Another moron CEO (Score:4, Informative)