Whats your take on commoditization, now that every player from big to
small start-ups is jumping on the SaaS bandwagon?
For one, it makes the technology more visible. But we are not here to
compete for free. We have been and would always be a customer-grade product. No
free lunches for sure. We give a business tool and that too for excellent value.
Its only cheaper.
How do you view the growing attempts of traditional proprietary software
and ERP players to make themselves relevant in the SaaS market with cloud
offerings?
All of them claim to be enhancing their portfolio with service-based
offerings. But look at the time line they promise. I just heard Microsoft head
honchos vision of making strides in this market. The problem is a time-horizon
like three years is too long. It astounds me to think that other players can
think of affording a timeline like that. Thats eccentric.
At Salesforce, we have a 12 quarter year and we come with three substantial
upgrades every year. Every upgrade is meaningful, and not just for the sake of
it. We maintain almost 100 new features per upgrade and at the same time make
sure it is non-disruptive. Also we never withdraw our support. We dont make
money by upgrades unlike others. We make money by service.
Is CIO adoption going in the right direction?
Legacy challenge is mainly about awareness. We have to make CIOs understand
that they dont have to replace a legacy. The black box can stay there like
earlier. Its about adding standard Web based services and capabilities around
it and explore that functionality to our cloud. We are hearing figures like 37%
of firms ripping off old systems with SaaS. In general terms, the vast majority
of the world is still far from understanding SaaS. A majority of customers are
still stuck with packaged applications and have not begun to explore its power.
Are arguments around security and scalability being addressed?
Our security is world-class with ongoing certifications, audits and reviews.
In terms of scale, that is not really a problem because of our follow-the-sun
model. Today, we can claim user-base as big as 1.1 mn users. Our single largest
customer of the 6,500 customers can scale up without any issues.
Pratima Harigunani
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in