On Tuesday the 7th of April I flew to London to attend Cloudforce 2009.  Cloudforce was a Cloud Computing event hosted by Salesforce one of the largest players in the Cloud Computing arena and certainly one of the longest standing

So firstly, why did Damson attend.  Well we are Salesforce customers and have been interested in reselling salesforce for some time now.  One of the main reasons we want to resell salesforce is that it integrates with Google Apps.  Google Apps is Damsons flagship “Cloud Computing” product.  Google are by any standards the world leaders in many area including web based applications and any product that integrates with Google is worth a look.

Well first off the conference itself was spectacular.  From the keynotes by Mark Bennioff (CEO of Salesforce) himeself to the giant foam Salesforce mascots running around attacking people!  It was a theatrical performance matched only by some of London westends best.  They had it all down to a tea.

I learnt alot about Salesforce in a relativley short space of time.  The most fundamental realisation I had was that it is not simpley a product accessible online like most other web apps.  It is actually a platform in which developers can create their own apps and run their own ideas, once they use force.com’s language of course.

This was amazing because we were shown how companies from all over the globe such as O2, Orange, Google, Dell and Starbucks were using Salesforce in very new and exciting ways.

What I realised from listening to customers is that salesforce works amazingly well for the big boys who have all the money to pay developers to make Salesforce do what they want and look the way they want but for the small business owner there is a crack which they fall through that Salesforce is not filling.  A gap that makes Salesforce too difficult, complex and expensive for small business owners to use because they don’t have developers who can make Salesforce look and feel the way they want.

This feedback was vital because it led to my conclusion that Salesforce albeit an amazing product and platform does not suit everyone and thats fine.  That is in essence our job a Damson, to match the product to the clients needs based off our analysis.  Salesforce is just another tool in Damsons Suite of products.  I look on Salesforce like the swiss army knife of CRM, it can do everything if you have the time to read the manual and learn how.  However, if you just want a knife, I’ll just sell you a knife (ie. a simpler CRM)

Every tool has its uses