July 7th, 2006
NetSuite takes issue with Salesforce claims
Those on-demand CRM guys. They just loooove to bad-mouth each other in public (depsite the fact that the founders are all good chums and have gone to each others’ weddings — even officiated over them). Today’s volley comes from the folks at NetSuite who take issue with Salesforce.com’s latest press release, the headline of which reads Jobscience Runs Entire Business on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. This of course had the folks at NetSuite asking, "Entire business, eh?" Because of how NetSuite can trace its roots back to some accounting modules which are still a part of its offering, NetSuite is typically the one that talks about how you can run your whole business (accounting, CRM, salesforce automation, etc.) on their platform whereas the others don’t offer accounting. Of course, in this case Salesforce.com isn’t necessarily referring to its out of the box functionality, but rather AppExchange which provides the necessary interfaces for other applications to integrate with Salesforce.com. Nevertheless, NetSuite ain’t buying it. Writes NetSuite’s Mei Li (via email):
In light of Salesforce.com’s last news release about a company using salesforce.com and AppExchange to run "their entire business", we would love to share some thoughts with you. Well, it turns out their definition of an "entire business" is quite unique. While Jobscience was using 30 applications integrated with salesforce.com (now, you have to ask yourself why a company with whopping 30 employees needs 30 applications — 11 of which they had to build themselves — to run their business. Does Salesforce.com really provide that little functionality?) There was one little tiny application that wasn’t running on AppExchange. You know, that insignificant application that invoices customers, tells you if you’re profitable, lets you know how much cash you have in the bank, pays your vendors, and pays your employees, among other meaningful business activities? The truth is - Jobsicence’s financial system of record is NOT part of AppExchange. I guess JobScience could just unplug it and continue running "their entire business" on salesforce.com. But then again, maybe not.
Whoa! Thems fightin’ words. But then again, in this ongoing he said she said, there has never been any word mincing. It livened up my Friday afternoon. That’s for sure.
