Wallstrip's salesforce.com / Glengarry Glen Ross Spoof

"I call this mama the upwardly mobile."

(PG-13)

PaaS Platforms Use Proven Architectures

"These companies [Amazon, Google, salesforce.com] have designed, implemented, and most importantly, run their critical business operations on these platforms. That in and of itself is more important than all the vaporware and marketing hype any other vendor comes up with. Rather than having to get customers to believe that a solution works via marketing and then force it down their IT staff's throats, Google and Amazon are basically saying 'Hey why not use stuff that we use and have proven can scale up to handle huge loads and huge amounts of data?'

...

I can base my decision to use a Google or Amazon service based on their actual track record in delivering these services and eating their own dog food, since they are trying to monetize their existing investment in proven highly distributed and scalable infrastructures."

http://www.sleberknight.com/blog/sleberkn/entry/cloud_oriented_architecture_coa

Salesforce.com Acquires InStranet

I've had a couple of customers that implemented the salesforce.com Customer Service & Support application, but couldn't be convinced to decommission their old support system because they wanted to keep using their existing Knowledge Base. Salesforce.com's acquisition of InStranet is great news and should resolve this objection. The InStranet Knowledge Base has an outstanding reputation and I'm thrilled that the salesforce.com Customer Service & Support story continues to improve.

"Apex Code Is Not a Niche Tool"

"[Apex Code] is not a niche tool for a proprietary platform -- rather, it's a Java-like language with an Eclipse-based tool ecosystem and excellent facilities for unleashing immense gains in developer productivity and enterprise project success."

http://blog.sforce.com/sforce/2008/05/proprietary-mis.html

"Mere Marketing"

"For those who pooh-pooh Microsoft's success as "mere marketing" I have a suggestion: You need to get into this "mere marketing" business. It has a way of driving adoption. It matters."

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080811/1932021951.shtml

"Lots of People Have Opinions About Platforms"

"Lots and lots of people have opinions about platforms, but the people whose opinions matter are programmers, and people who can make decisions about what programmers program."

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-three-kinds.html

</Technical Consultant>