that is an interesting comment. i think that the short-term benefit would be more licenses, but in the long-run the platform becomes the key component here. licenses change meaning when you can rent the platform, much more interesting business model.

thanks
esteban

Once a troublemaker, always one I guess. That is a great idea, but I not very certain that is implementable… right?

However, being able to work in a joint manner with your partners – even work the negotiations via social media for a deal with a vendor. Now, those are interesting ideas I can sink my teeth into…

Thanks for the read
Esteban

Thanks for reading, the good comment, and the kind words in your blog about this write-up.

I am glad to be getting the perspective of someone who has a vendor-twist and vendor-understanding to this situation. I totally agree with you about the interesting part of Chatter (yet- we won’t know until a year from now whether it delivers on that key point) is making applications social. The demos I saw from people doing applications in Force.com and leveraging the Chatter API were far more interesting than the use within SFDC’s applications.

As for the PaaS interconnectivity, I think that we are moving in the right direction, but wish that MSFT, AMZN, and the other large PaaS providers were to get on board with that (I had a conversation with a vendor that is hosting their solution on AMZN at the show, and they are now thinking about migrating to Force.com to take advantage of Chatter and the promise of interconnectivity that was underneath the materials they made available on Force.com to partners). It going to be more than necessary to have as many PaaS providers as we can to get the cloud off the ground (if I was truly poetic I would say that we need to get the fog lifted and converted to a real cloud – bad pun). I agree it looks promising — but that is the subject of next blog post — probably Monday.

Thanks, again, for the kind words…
Esteban

What is cool about Chatter is that it puts social info and collaboration into the workflow of real business applications. This is the promise of social computing in the enterprise, and it does require infrastructure / infrastructure investment. Not only will it drive productivity, any enterprise that does not social-enable or make collaborative its applications will not be able to function in the not too distant future. After all, it is people that are working with these apps and the more informed and connected they are and the more streamlined the work, the better.

With respect to your larger point in the comments above of whether the cloud will fulfill the long-held promise of a distributed architecture, it depends on how open Force.com will be in playing with other PaaS players. So far, it looks promising.
Brian Magierski´s last blog ..links for 2009-11-21

I think the real evolution is the general acceptance of the Cloud for Business purposes – having the tools managed externally so that you can concentrate on your business (co-creation of value with your ecosystem).

The Marketing (or Education) has worked well…now let’s get down to business!
Mark Tamis´s last blog ..Social CRM for SMEs : WeCanDo.Biz Review

I don’t get the excitement. Please explain, in as little technological words as possible.

Thx. Wim
Wim Rampen´s last blog ..Is Mr. Paradigm keeping up with Mr. Big?

The noteworthy stuff here is the evolution of the cloud – the concept of the cloud. Trust me, since the early 1960s we have been waiting for a truly distributed architecture. I have been behind — well, everything I can think of: CORBA, COM/DCOM, Distributed Architectures, TimeShare… and more! When the internet replaced VANs for inter-connectivity I was excited… and I have been waiting for 15 years to see something being made of that.

So, what is the innovation? Taking nearly 50 years of theory and making it possible? no. The innovation is to come… Chatter matters as a proof-of-concept and a real data point towards real distributed architectures… it is just wait and see now.

The application? interesting, making the apps talk directly into the social networks is probably best feature — but nowhere near as exciting as the platform developments.

Am I wrong?