February 3rd, 2006
Hosted CRM, SaaS tectonic plate shifting
In this latest episode of the Dan & David Show, I go solo as David is out with a bad but recovering back. In this shortened edition I give my take on the busy week in hosted CRM land. Salesforce.com customers were subjected to what the company called a "minor" outage, but it wasn’t deemed minor by all who experienced it. Nor was salesforce.com willing to provide specific details of the outage. Stonewalling courtesy of Marc Benioff and company. Also this week, shareholders approved the Oracle/ Siebel merging, paving the way for Larry Ellison to get more serious about CRM. The Siebel product will be the foundation of Oracle’s Fusion CRM, which will roll out over the next two years. Yesterday, SAP joined the hosted CRM dance with its hybrid "isolated tenancy," which will most likely be isolated to SAP’s existing customer base, which is a good sized market by itself. The podcast can be delivered directly to your desktop or MP3 player if you’re subscribed to our podcasts (See ZDNet’s podcasts: How to tune in). For more the topics covered during the show, search our blog.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
