Rick Nucci of Boomi sat down with us today at SIIA's OnDemand '09 and gave us his thoughts on integration.  Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek so be sure to check back with us for the full length interview!

http://www.boomi.com 

Guy Shani, Vice President Sales for Clarizen presented their collaborative online project management software.

About Clarizen:

Social media has become one of the most-hyped aspects of marketing. Everyone and their mother seem to be talking about running ads on Facebook or sending out product offers via Twitter.  Others are convinced this is all a huge waste of time and that we should stick to buying lists and email campaigns. Over the past year, Appirio and Marketo have found that social media is an extremely valuable tool for augmenting their revenue-focused marketing automation efforts.

Presented by Jon Miller (VP of Marketing - Marketo) and Kirk Crenshaw (Director, Online Marketing - Appirio) -- this session discussed what no social media marketer wants to talk about: results.

At Appirio, more than 20% of web traffic comes from Twitter, and a strategic blend of blog posts and Twitter yielded 1000+ webinar registrations and even a few well-qualified leads. More than 3500 followers read Marketo's B2B marketing blog, and social media helped drive thousands of people to register and 300-plus people to participate live in the The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing webinar.

Christopher Keene, CEO of WaveMaker Software gave us a quick overview of WaveMaker's Visual Ajax Studio. WaveMaker is available as an open source product that includes a development studio and a full deployment server. Customers wanting commercial support and add-on features such as role-based access controls must purchase annual subscription licenses.

Here are some highlights from the presentation:

• WaveMaker has a community of 15,000 plus developers
• WaveMaker's customers come from three key sectors:
  • Government
  • ISVs
  • The Enterprise
• WaveMaker's easy-to-use visual builder enables drag & drop assembly of scalable, web-applications using Ajax widgets, web services and databases.
• Once the application is built it can easily be launched to Amazon's EC2.

Learn more at WaveMaker.com

Boomi invites salesforce.com customers to contribute and vote for their "dream widget" -- a widget in this case is an integration between any third-party application and Salesforce CRM. Boomi is opening up the selection process to the salesforce.com community to decide which integration would be the most useful in today's business environment. Ideas, may include anything from social media applications to enterprise software. Boomi would build the most popular selection and offer it for free to any salesforce.com customer who visits the Boomi booth at Dreamforce Global Gathering 2009, the cloud-computing event to be held from Nov. 17 to 20.

The contest will end on Oct. 30th.

There are a lot of choices out there for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, with the most common being Salesforce.com. Just like the Starbucks of the world, Salesforce.com uses it's deep pockets and creative marketing power to muffle the efforts of others in the CRM space -- until now!

If you take a close look at Salesforce.com's CRM packages you'll see a solution not too different from what they first developed 10 years ago when software-as-a-service was just hitting the market - that solution has been morphed and molded into what you see today. 

Insight Direct, the leading provider of software for companies that need a better way to manage service delivery, announced record third quarter business results highlighted by 263 new customers, record growth in the SaaS
business, and the addition of Jim Triandiflou and Dave O`Connor to the management team.

"The third-quarter was a great quarter for the business. We hit all of our critical customer and financial targets - customer retention, renewals, new customers acquired, revenue, profit, and cash.  And our VaZing SaaS business had a record month in September," said Jim Triandiflou, President and Chief Executive Officer at Insight Direct. "Perhaps more importantly, we saw field service providers interested in making an investment in their business. They realize they can`t do things the way they used too. They must find ways to reduce operational costs, increase the efficiency of their field technicians, and reduce waste. Our solutions help them run a better business.

As a services business, our success is based on customer satisfaction, said Dave Hahmann, President of Bay Area Pool Service, a new Insight Direct customer. Keeping customers happy is a lot of work, especially when it comes to scheduling technicians, mapping service routes, and dealing with cancelations across a base of 6300 customers and a field force of 32 technicians. ServiceCEO, with its integrated back office and mobile features, will eliminate the need for paper route books, minimize the costs associated with changes and cancellations, and allow us to be more responsive to our customers.

ActionStep, a New Zealand SaaS provider, has signed an agreement with UK based Deskforce to deliver ActionStep’s CRM+ hosted solution to Deskforce’s 20,000-plus customer base in the UK and continental Europe.

Deskforce will also target new market sectors with CRM+, via its established network of Managed Service Providers.

Deskforce is a leading provider of SaaS desktop management tools to the UK and European markets. ActionStep’s hosted CRM+ solution integrates perfectly with Deskforce’s established product portfolio and enhances its strategy to become a leading centre of excellence for SaaS-based applications. With six years’ experience in the SaaS space, Deskforce will be launching a number of new solutions in the coming months to widen and strengthen its service offering.

Paul Sadlier, CEO, Deskforce EU, comments: “ActionStep’s philosophy and approach is in perfect harmony with Deskforce’s and with market demands. Today, customers want and expect solutions that deliver bottom-line business benefits, not me-too solutions. Delivering applications as a hosted solution, securely, anywhere globally, improves these benefits both financially and operationally.”

Ted Jordan, founder and CEO, ActionStep, says: “We’re excited about our launch into the UK market. The relationship with Deskforce means we will be able to make an immediate impact. With a large, existing client base, and a proven track record in the SaaS space, Deskforce is an ideal channel for ActionStep.”

Dell and Salesforce.com announced the availability of Dell-salesforce.com solutions, joint offerings for small and medium businesses or SMBs, that deliver customer relationship management or CRM applications via the cloud.

These solutions will allow small and medium businesses in the United States to manage their people and processes more efficiently by deploying sales force automation and CRM across their businesses. The joint offerings require no incremental hardware or software to install or maintain, and customers will be able to manage all their customer information, activities, and conversations, with subscription based pricing starting from $9 per user per month.

StepStone a global leader in talent management solutions, has signed over 70 new customers in the third quarter (July-September) of 2009 against 55 in its second quarter, a near 30% increase. In addition, StepStone closed over 100 contracts for additional commitments with existing customers, also an increase over Q2 2009. New customer growth was achieved in all of StepStone’s major markets, and with each major product line strongly represented. Wins were recorded with a very wide range of customer types, including major global corporations, important national businesses, government organisations and the education and not-for-profit sectors. StepStone has also recently introduced a new, entry-level web-based product, Candidate Tracker, which spans its Online and Solutions businesses, and initial response from customers has been strong, with over 150 units sold in its first month of introduction.

New customers announced in recent months include cabling giant Nexans; RWE, one of Europe’s largest energy utilities; sporting goods manufacturer Puma; speciality chemicals company AlzChem; and global broadcaster MTV.