Why the salesforce.com Incubator Should Excite You - An Early Peek from the Initial Occupant

Recently Appirio added an office in salesforce.com's Incubator in San Mateo and became one of its anchor tenants. In fact, we had several historic firsts - we were the first ones in the door when it opened, we made the first pot of coffee, and we held our first management team offsite in one of the many conference rooms. We have already established links to some excellent AppExchange partners located in the building! For Appirio, a salesforce.com partner and a true believer in the power of on-demand, the benefits are clear. We accelerate the rate of innovation of our own work and salesforce.com. By easily chatting about what customers are doing, their future needs, and where the market is headed, partners can collectively find ideas that will change the industry. Savvy partners can establish networks of complementary firms that allow the group to compete with any ecosystem or firm in the industry. We also believe that the incubator represents a much broader trend. Collaboration among customers, partners (SI/ISVs), and software firms will become the key to success. Customers will add to the synergy via extended value chains; software mashups will become as prevalent and valuable as hyperlinking; and complementary partners will come together "on demand" to provide what customers need. This is far more powerful than a single firm's marketing department independently trying to determine what customers want. Whether you believe the salesforce.com Incubator will change Appirio and the industry, or you just want to try variants of the morning coffee, we welcome you to come over and see what all the excitement is about. We'll have more firsts in the next few months, including training sessions, customer roundtables, and thought leadership seminars. We're also hoping to be the first to break in the Nintendo Wii, XBox and PS3 when they arrive! And rest assured, we've cleared out this tower of all the Siebel on-premise demons... Training rooms ready for use

The lobby is being built out as a showcase for the Incubator No Signs of Siebel ghosts at the Entrance to the World Famous Incubator The innagural pot of coffee acompanied by an Appirio mug Comfortable gathering areas are ready for friendly visitors Funky walls and sunny cubes await