Tag Archive for 'benioff'

Benioff on the future…

Published by Ben Kepes on June 21, 2008 in Business, Design, Efficiency, IT, PaaS, SaaS and Strategy. 2 Comments

Robert Scoble interviewed salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff in a broad ranging discussion about the future of applications and platforms. It’s an interesting and insightful interview. Key takeouts and themes were;

  • It’s not about the browser, it’s about the network. With a move to mobile and other non PC devices, platforms that can serve device agnostic data will win
  • SFDC is now over $1bill revenue and most recent quarter showed 50% growth
  • Benioff lambasts the incumbent ISVs in particular, saying many times that they block innovation
  • This Monday a major announcement will be made regarding a Google/salesforce partnership in terms of platform sharing

In an interesting exchange, Scoble asks Benioff how one changes the thinking of people mired in Windows 2000 and the Word/Excel/Powerpoint world. Benioff uses the example of when he started at Oracle 20 years ago and CIOs were reluctant to use Oracle, wedded as the were to the DEC incumbent offerings Benioff gave this excellent quote;

In this industry we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a year but underestimate what we can achieve in a decade

A great interview and an insight into the thinking of one of the earliest SaaS disrupters. Check out the full video here.

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