Are You Ready for September?

There’s been a lot of software-as-a-service (SaaS) noise over the summer, but it’s nothing compared to what’s coming next month. The battle for SaaS 2.0 (or perhaps platform-as-a-service) is about to heat up as SAP enters the ring, Oracle doubles down, and of course Microsoft continues to try to get their on-demand CRM (Titan) out the door. It’s also the month of Dreamforce, where salesforce.com and their partners will likely make a lot of announcements to showcase real customer success, innovation, and momentum.

If this article in yesterday’s Internet news is any indication, it’s going to get ugly! It quotes Marc Benioff from the recent Salesforce earnings call as saying, “The appeal to customers is undeniable. But for entrenched legacy vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, to truly adopt this model is unthinkable.” And when asked to comment, the SAP spokesperson responds with this rather ironic statement: “We are focused on our customers, not competitive claims.” (According to these documents, that has certainly not always been the case…but I digress.)

At LucidEra, we agree wholeheartedly with Marc’s statement. As legacy business intelligence companies like Business Objects get set to spend like drunken sailors to promote their on-demand business through acquisitions and marketing dollars, we’ll continue to focus on customer success with our sales and finance analytic solutions and 100% on-demand platform.

So enjoy the last few days of August and get set to strap yourself in for the marketing madness of September. It’s going to be fun!

posted by Darren Cunningham at 8:13 am

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