Thursday, February 01, 2007
egoboss: SaaS vendors welcome SAP to hosted midmarket party
egoboss: SaaS vendors welcome SAP to hosted midmarket party: "'We think it's fantastic,' said Bruce Francis, vice president of corporate strategy at Salesforce.com, talking Friday about SAP's announcement. 'It feels like we should send Henning Kagermann a fruit basket. He's just blown wide open accounts that were welded shut.'
Previously, when Salesforce.com would approach some companies, they'd be told the user wasn't interested, according to Francis. 'The customer would say, 'We're an SAP shop and SAP doesn't do on-demand,'' he said. Now that SAP has formally committed to a full on-demand offering, Salesforce.com is more likely to be included in any future software evaluations made by those users, Francis added.
In a Thursday e-mail to NetSuite staff, CEO Zach Nelson also welcomed SAP's news, describing it as the vendor's 'IBM moment.'
Nelson recalled a comment his former boss Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison made in relation to a previous competitive situation. Nelson wrote, 'Larry Ellison once told me that the best thing that happened to Oracle in the early days was IBM’s preannouncement of a relational database years before it was available. It gave credibility to the then-new idea of relational databases and created demand that IBM could not fulfill.'"
Previously, when Salesforce.com would approach some companies, they'd be told the user wasn't interested, according to Francis. 'The customer would say, 'We're an SAP shop and SAP doesn't do on-demand,'' he said. Now that SAP has formally committed to a full on-demand offering, Salesforce.com is more likely to be included in any future software evaluations made by those users, Francis added.
In a Thursday e-mail to NetSuite staff, CEO Zach Nelson also welcomed SAP's news, describing it as the vendor's 'IBM moment.'
Nelson recalled a comment his former boss Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison made in relation to a previous competitive situation. Nelson wrote, 'Larry Ellison once told me that the best thing that happened to Oracle in the early days was IBM’s preannouncement of a relational database years before it was available. It gave credibility to the then-new idea of relational databases and created demand that IBM could not fulfill.'"
