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

About Clarizen:

Inc. Magazine interviewed Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff as SaaS and Cloud Computing celebrates 10 years. Here are some of the highlights.

• When you started Salesforce.com in 1999, Web-based software was virtually unheard of. Looking back, what convinced you that the idea was going to work?
  When I was at Oracle in 1996, we were working with Amazon.com in architecting their system. And I said, If Amazon could build a system to deliver books, then we can deliver business functionality through the same technology model. What we were really able to do is stand on the shoulders of giants like Amazon and eBay and other consumer services who had pioneered this idea but for consumer ecommerce, or search, or for auctions. What we were able to show is how companies could run all their business information that same exact way.

• Do you have an example of a small business that is using cloud computing particularly well?
  There’s a great company called Vetrazzo: They crush recycled glass and turn it into kitchen counter tops—it’s very cool. The CEO is a guy named Jim Sheppard and he’s able to take our services, not just CRM, but our platform called Force.com and he runs an entire business on Salesforce and Force.com. He’s built manufacturing, inventory, and customer management systems on it—and he’s one of the fastest-growing companies in environmental products. The power of that is as he grows and gets bigger and scales and gets more successful, he doesn’t have to change systems because we can go higher when he goes higher. You can be a business of any size—small, medium, or large—but if you’re a small business about to turn into a big business like Vetrazzo, we’re ideal for you because you can focus on your business, not your software. 

I love it when a plan comes together...  Specifically, I'm talking about the release of the first installment of our web video series highlighting what's new, hot and stimulating in the world of SaaS and Cloud Computing.  This month's episode features a company out of San Diego called eMOBUS - the premiere SaaS solution in mobility management.

It was only a few short weeks ago that Matt and I were sitting at Java Beach down by Ocean Beach in San Francisco, when were brain storming on ideas of how DreamSimplicity could continue to add value to those that make and sell SaaS as well as those companies in need of a software solution.  Sure we had over 1,000 vendor and solution profiles and many white papers and case studies to go along with those.  We had a SaaS event calendar with happenings around the world addressing issues on both the buyer and vendor side of SaaS and Cloud Computing.  We had recently launched our SaaS Video library when the idea hit us.  It was one of those "Hey, we could do this!" moments...

 One of the issues facing SaaS companies is that today's SaaS sales cycle is not the software sales cycle of 5 or 10 years ago...  Gone are the days of high paid sales execs with expense accounts flying business class to press the flesh with potential clients.  SaaS is just too cheap to justify spending that kind of money on just one deal.  The SaaS sales of today is "get in get out", "short and sweet", and "cut your losses and move on".  And that's great for everyone, because as the buyer/user, rather than spending all your time choosing a solution, you can now put that time towards using a solution.  But, what we lose in the process is a feeling for WHO the SaaS vendor really is...  And then there was DreamSimplicity Profiles...