Chatter Matters - Adding Social Capabilities to Enterprise Apps

Narinder Singh

Today I had an opportunity to present the next generation of our Professional Services (PS) Cloud solution, Social PS Enterprise, with Marc Benioff on stage at Dreamforce. For the last six months, we've toured around discussing PS Enterprise with great response from customers - VP of Services, Services Ops and Managers and Consultants. Our message - tying together sales with professional services, providing full end-to-end processes to manage your people, customers, projects and numbers, and ability to easily scale with a powerful underlying platform - resonated with an industry ill-served by traditionally manufacturing-centric enterprise systems.

Yet in many of the pundit conversations we've been asked why build on Force.com. Aren't we worried about losing control over the underlying platform our entire application relies on? Today, more than any other, explains the power of building on top of cloud platforms. In a single announcement, a single release, Appirio's Professional Services Enterprise Solution will become "Social." Because Force.com is a true multi-tenant cloud platform, an addition by salesforce.com to that platform (in this case chatter), allows all customer apps and ISV solutions to inherit those same capabilities.

Professional Services have always been social, their systems just haven't been able to handle a conversation
Many of our customers had asked for capabilities like these. They did not always use words like "social business apps" or "twitter" but often contrasted their business life with how Facebook, Twitter or the web work. Because people are at the very core of their businesses, services firms are always looking for ways to work better together and make better, data-driven, decisions. Their interests are in actions like improving utilization, making better staffing decisions, taking advantage of new information and knowledge across their organizations. Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions are traditionally the domain of the administrative and financial team of a services business. Consultants only interact with a PSA application to enter time or file expenses - low value-added activities.

The success or failure of a professional services team depends on how effectively consultants and others work together. Today, that engagement happens through email, IM, phone conversations and spreadsheets/documents - all completely disconnected from the business systems of a company. Why does this disconnect matter? Because islands of collaboration without business context can be misguided. And business process without collaboration is a shell of what really drives action in an organization.

Now enterprise applications, our PS Enterprise being the first, can become social-- allowing a conversation between business events like pipeline, projects and financials, and people. We've been able to add dozens of features and use cases with limited or even no additional development because of the addition of the chatter platform. Systems can chatter important updates (my project end date has changed), and people can have conversations about those changes (staffing adjustments, sending out an invoice, asking about a press release) with the context of data from their systems. (Click here to Social PS Enterprise in action)

Early reaction from discussions with customers we've shared the news with has been fantastic - social scenarios for professional services just makes sense.

What about the rest of my apps?

Chatter as a platform goes beyond ISV solutions like our Social PS Enterprise (no matter how exciting). Each custom application ever built on Force.com will be able to participate in internal conversations. Appirio's enterprise clients like Japan Post, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters, BMC, Transunion, ACI and others now can select any object in their Force.com applications and allow them to chatter. Business users in these companies can then safely, securely, and privately have conversations triggered by and about that data. They can "friend" or "follow" their applications and important information in them. Follow chatter about key people, projects, opportunities, invoices, shipments, patients, warehouses, books, campaigns, ads, bills, credits or any other part of an application created on the Force.com platform. All of a sudden conversations about your business are intertwined with the data you need to take action.

Chatter Matters because:

1. Previously isolated business data can now be a part of meaningful conversations about the business.
2. Its another stunning proof point of the delta in the rate of innovation between the old world and what real cloud platforms can provide.
3. When it becomes available every customer and prospect can skip the marketing and decide for themselves by trying it out.

Chatter will be generally available soon and for existing customers, it is a simple flip of the switch to try it. If you're new to Force.com as a platform, sign up for Force.com Free edition, build an app and watch it become chatterized!

Creative Ideas to Business Results - The Power of the Cloud

Today, we are proud and excited to have our work with Avon's mark brand featured on the big stage with Marc Benioff. Nothing makes us happier than seeing our customers' success and leadership recognized by their peers. Mark is the story of a creative idea that could not have been turned into reality without the cloud.

mark. situation and business need
Mark found that their customers, college-aged women, are spending more and more time on communities like Facebook. They wanted to use Facebook to encourage, manage, and measure word of mouth referrals, which is their most important source of new business. The mark team had a short timeframe and wanted to demonstrate the impact of engaging in social networks before making a significant commitment.

The solution: a custom application powered by Force.com (click to view a demo)

Appirio worked with the mark team to quickly build a Facebook application and custom Salesforce application to enable them to engage with their customers on Facebook.

On the front-end, a Facebook application enables mark to push new content and offers out to their community, and encourage them to make relevant referrals to their friends. A custom Saleforce backend enables mark to manage the content that they publish to Facebook and measure the impact of their social marketing campaigns. Our solution brings together the rich engagement features of Facebook with the powerful lead/campaign management and reporting features of Salesforce.

This is exactly the type of work we find energizing - a creative solution bringing together the best of multiple cloud platforms to achieve measurable business results. All in less than a month.

What this means for you
Force.com is a powerful and open platform that can help you quickly turn your ideas into results. The question is how to get started and how to build momentum internally. Salesforce has made it really easy for companies to get started with their Force.com free edition which enables you to build apps for up to 100 users for no cost. This is the perfect opportunity to pick an application and experience the speed and power of building in the cloud!

Salesforce.com Chatter: Enterprise Apps Break their long Silence

At today's Dreamforce keynote, Salesforce.com will announce a new capability they're adding to their platform: Chatter, which brings Facebook-like conversations and Twitter-style realtime status updates to enterprise apps. This new capability has the potential to bridge the gap between enterprise applications and the way people work - we wanted to spend some time discussing the implications.

The problem: The disconnect between enterprise apps and the way we work
Enterprise apps have been silent for far too long. They contain tons of great information and insight about a company but getting anything out of them is complex, especially in time to take action. As anyone who has used SAP or Oracle knows, it is far from simple to perform routine business tasks like finding out which of my customers aren't current on their payments, where my region is relative to forecasts or why an opportunity close date got pushed. These types of basic queries often require calling IT, taking a deep breath and praying for a response. There must be a better way.

We've tried to fill the gap with email. Someone runs a report and sends out an email asking why something happened. People look into various systems, discuss, and reply in email. The interaction is anything but smooth, and all history of the change in data and resulting analysis and conclusions is lost forever in that email trail. In our personal lives, we've begun to enjoy information about our friends, family and business contacts at a near-instant rate. The velocity of information has accelerated with the advent of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The result of this contrast in styles of information exchange is that enterprise apps have become marginal to the lives of 80% of business users within a company. Both Oracle and SAP have attempted band-aid solutions to this through BI, dashboards and attempted integrations with equally archaic methods of communication like Microsoft Outlook, but that has done little to address the fundamental issue. Enterprise apps contain tons of great information that the majority of a company could benefit from, if only business users could actually access that information and act on it in a timely manner.

The solution: Chatter

Today, Salesforce, announced Chatter, which brings Facebook-like conversations and Twitter-style real-time status updates to enterprise apps. You and your colleagues can "chatter" just like you would on Facebook, sparking conversations and discussions with other colleagues. But now, your business applications can also "chatter." You can "follow" the parts of your business - people, projects, customers and financials - that are most important to you. When that part of your business changes, now it can tell you... it can "chatter" about it in real-time by sending out a status update. With Chatter, you can instantly see important changes in your business and collaborate with the right people to take corrective action.

Here's an example: Imagine you're following a set of sales opportunities important to your quarter. If one of those opportunities gets pushed out, you'll see that opportunity "chatter" about it in your feed, along with the chatter of your co-workers explaining what's wrong and what can be done to fix it. As soon as action is taken and the opportunity is updated again, you'll see that in your chatter feed as well. This is in stark contrast to waiting for a weekly status report, emailing the person responsible, and waiting for an update after they take corrective action. This conversation occurs amongst knowledgeable users and the data in the system. Its reduces friction in communication, brings data and discussion together, and is captured historically for your company to learn from.

What it means for the industry and for customers
Salesforce has changed the game for enterprise apps by systematically addressing each of their traditional weaknesses. First, it was time to value, agility and TCO with the SaaS model. Then it was speed of development and capital costs for new apps with the Force.com platform. Now, Salesforce is changing the nature of our interactions with enterprise apps. This is as much of a break with the past on the front-end as their other innovations were on the back-end.

For customers, this (again) proves the power of multi-tenant cloud solutions. Without effort, every app that has ever been built on Force.com is automatically chatterized (inherits the features and capabilities of salesforce Chatter). Think about the implications of that for a second. Without doing a single thing or writing a single line of code, every Force.com application that you own or have bought is now social. That's the power of building on a platform like Force.com.

More to come tomorrow!

UPDATE: Read our real-time notes from this morning's Dreamforce Keynote by Marc Benioff, and our takeaways from Parker's demo of Chatter on Dreamforce Central

Navigating the Cloud Ecosystem

This week, nearly 16,000 people will descend on Moscone center for Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference, all interested in one thing-- learning more about cloud computing. They will wander the Expo hall, which will highlight over 1,000 solutions built on the Force.com platform alone. People are hungry for information about this trend-- "cloud" is now the most searched-on term on Gartner.com, and Google will deliver 32 million results for a search on the term, including 10,000 news articles published so far this month.

How is a CIO supposed to navigate this complex and rapidly expanding market? We're excited to launch today a free, online tool that we hope will help-- providing some transparency into the cloud ecosystem, based on our experience helping move thousands of companies to the cloud.

Appirio's Cloud Ecosystem Map
The map breaks out nearly 70 different layers of technology across applications, platforms and infrastructure. It distinguishes between offerings that are true cloud offerings vs. those that are "hosted" (single tenant / multi-instance) vs. those that are on-premise "private cloud"...not really a cloud at all. The offerings of leading vendors are highlighted across the stack, as are point solutions from emerging vendors.

We invite you to explore the map-- start at 30,000 feet with a high-level overview of the major players and the areas where they have offerings. Drill down into an area to learn more about the underlying technology, and the myriad of other vendors with offerings in that same space. For cloud offerings, we provide links to learn more. Read Troy Angrignon's detailed release notes-- we were fortunate to be able to work with Troy and build on his ecosystem map, published in March of this year. This release is intended to be a living, breathing map-- please let us know if we have something wrong or if you know of a solution that should be added.

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The Takeaways
Here's what we've learned from assembling the map and using it to help our clients navigate the cloud ecosystem:

The ecosystem is exploding: It is difficult to keep up with both true cloud innovation and cloud marketing, and increasingly hard to tell the two apart. Every major technology vendor has a "cloud computing" page on their website. Cloud is at the top of Gartner's Hype Cycle, and it shows-- vendors are using the term to describe a bewildering array of technologies. "We’ve redefined ‘cloud computing’ to include everything we currently do" says Larry Ellison-- at least he's being up-front about it.

The "how" matters: Technology consumers sometimes wonder why they should care "how" their technology is being provided to them-- single-tenant or multi-tenant. Unfortunately, they need to care-- multi-tenancy is the primary driver behind the business case for cloud computing. Shared infrastructure changes the underlying economics of IT, allowing the vendor to maintain a single instance for thousands of customers. This results in more than just economies of scale: multi-tenancy enables agility and innovation since there's only one code base to work off of, and customer behavior can be observed realtime. Multi-tenancy is applied in various degrees by the vendors in our map, but the more that is shared across customers, the more each customer benefits.

Lines are blurring: It is getting harder, not easier, to figure out where solutions fit into the cloud ecosystem. IBM claims that many of its cloud solutions can be run "on the IBM cloud OR on your own data center." That decision is certain to have an impact on IBM's ability to innovate on these solutions-- they need to worry about maintaining multiple instances of their solution, just like traditional on-premise software. But does that mean that the version running on IBM's public cloud is NOT a cloud solution? We put those offerings in both columns, but this is a judgement call.

The Bottom Line
The best way to navigate the cloud ecosystem is to look for tell-tale signs of the benefits of cloud computing: Can you sign up for a trial on the site? Is there a "trust" page that gives real-time transparency into how the system is being used by customers? Most importantly, are there quantified, real-life examples of customers using the solution to create value for their business.... and can you talk to them? The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the best signposts to help you build a business case-driven roadmap to the cloud are examples of customer success.

That's one of the reasons we're so excited about this week's Dreamforce conference-- there's no better opportunity to learn about how organizations are benefiting from cloud computing. Stop by our booth (#616) and we'd be happy to give you a tour of the cloud ecosystem.... with real case studies from our experience helping accelerate enterprise adoption of the cloud.

Learning from the Pioneers - Vetrazzo

Today, we'll be speaking to James Sheppard.  James is the CEO of Vetrazzo.  Vetrazzo collects discarded glass from sources as diverse as last night's chardonnay and Heineken bottles to decommissioned traffic lights and and transforms it into beautiful, eco-friendly surfaces such as countertops and tabletops.  James is a veteran software industry executive who took over the helm at Vetrazzo in 2006.  James has overseen a radical reinvention of Vetrazzo's IT foundation and now runs Vetrazzo's manufacturing, warehousing and distribution operations entirely in the cloud.

We'll be speaking to James about what led him to build an ERP system in the cloud and what he's learned from the experience.

Who is Vetrazzo and what is your role there?

I am the CEO of Vetrazzo.  Vetrazzo manufactures a recycled glass surfacing material for use as countertops, vanities and more.  Think of it as a sustainable alternative to granite and other quarried stone.  We're excited to be part of the rapidly growing market for green building products.  Our product has been in the market for 13 years but we relaunched the Vetrazzo brand under a new company about 4 years ago.

What led you to look beyond traditional manufacturing solutions such as SAP and Oracle?

When we formed Vetrazzo 4 years ago, a lot of the internal manufacturing operations were being run off spreadsheets.  We knew there was a big opportunity to gain efficiencies if we had the right system to manage our operations - inventory, manufacturing, etc.

Our requirements for our new system were the following:

• Needed a web-based system to support multiple locations and plants
  
• Wanted remote users to have the same experience as others
  
• Wanted to scale and grow the business without a large dedicated IT team
  
• Needed fast turnaround time on developing new application functionality
  

We couldn't find anything off-the-shelf that could work for us without a lot of development effort.  We looked at solutions such as SAP and Oracle but they are a bear to configure and customize.  Then, in April 2008, we started thinking about using Force.com.  We'd been using Salesforce at Vetrazzo for CRM but weren't aware of what the platform could do beyond CRM.  But after Salesforce built a prototype of a manufacturing system, we were convinced that it could address our needs.

What made you take the leap of faith to a new platform?

Frankly, it wasn't that much of a leap of faith.  I saw from looking at the prototype that there was nothing limiting what was possible with the platform.  The alternative of building something on my own or heavily customizing Oracle or SAP was a non-starter economically.  Since all we had to invest in was the platform licenses and some consulting fees to help us build the app, the decision became quite easy.

What happened after you decided to build your ERP system on Force?

We engaged a Salesforce partner to help us start building the applications we needed.  I'd already done a ton of work gathering requirements and putting a very formal structure in place so I thought I could re-use that to drive the Force development project.  I was prepared for a typical IT project with traditional waterfall processes, offshore and onshore teams, etc.  Once we got going, I found that whatever I could dream up could be developed quickly.  We gave up the traditional approach and start working iteratively because we could build as quickly as I could come with ideas.  In 7 months, we built a system that would have taken years and perhaps millions of dollars to develop using on-premise platforms.

What processes do you currently have in the cloud?

Other than financials, we run our entire business is in the cloud.  We use Salesforce CRM to manage our leads/opportunities and we have a custom Force.com application for core operations.  Our core operations system includes manufacturing, inventory, production planning, customer service, shipping, warranty management, equipment maintenance, plant reporting, quality assurance, channel training, purchasing and more.  It's really a full-featured ERP system in the cloud.

What was different about developing in the cloud compared to what you've experienced in the past?

There were three main things that were very different than what I've seen before.  The first is speed of development.  We could literally build apps as quickly as I could dream them up.  I've never had this experience before.

As a direct result of the speed of development, we were able to move to a very iterative model rather a traditional approach.  This was much more effective.  Finally, we found that we could operate with very lean teams.  All we needed was a business analyst and a developer.  We didn't need a large on-shore team to gather requirements, map the current and future state and then an offshore team for development.

What advice do you have for customers who are considering moving to the cloud?

Every organization should pick a small app and try building it in the cloud.  If you do, you'll see that you can get something live and get a win in the same time that you'd be having your 48th meeting on requirements.

You should resist the temptation to pick something too small.  Unless you pick something that matters, it'll be hard to demonstrate benefits and prove value.  We started with managing production, ordering and shipping for our product.  Not everyone needs to do that but picking something that matters and addresses a real pain point is critical.

For many organizations, the best way to build momentum is by demonstrating the value of building in the cloud. By building an app on Force.com, you can demonstrate how quick, cost-effective and easy-to-support cloud apps are.

Note: Vetrazzo is not an Appirio customer

Top 5 Ways to Get the Most out of Dreamforce

Top 5 Ways to Get the Most out of the Cloud Computing Event of the Year

For the last several years, Dreamforce has been more than the salesforce.com event, it has been a reflection of the state of the cloud computing world. With new announcements, partnerships and information on salesforce.com's sales cloud, service cloud and custom cloud solutions - not to mention meet-ups, dinners, events, and other gatherings - it can also be overwhelming. Last year, aside from salesforce.com, Appirio had more people at the event than any company (and proud to repeat that this year). As such, we wanted to pull together some tips on getting the most from the event. And even if you or your team are not coming to Dreamforce, we have some ideas on how you can gain from it. Here are our top 5 tips:

Number 5 - Treat the Keynotes Like a Must See Concert

Keynotes are where salesforce.com reveals all of their new announcements and shows the latest applications of those technologies (we had our work featured in two of the demonstrations in last year's keynote). This year you can even come to the keynote for free. The keynotes have the feel of a technology rock concert / pep rally to change an industry. There will be an amazing video to open, Marc will cover salesforce.com's momentum as a company, and then they will build to a thundering announcement(s). The Day 1 keynote will announce the biggest news, and then Day 2 makes the news concrete with more detail and fantastic demos. Unlike past years where Salesforce has pre-briefed the industry, we believe this year's announcements will be a complete surprise. You can watch twitter for a rumbling real-time view of the keynote as it happens, or they have sometimes broadcast the event live (or with a short delay). And this year, Microsoft's PDC is competing directly with Dreamforce, so expect some real fireworks.

Number 4 - Prepare for, keep track of, and reflect back on Dreamforce.... in the Cloud!

The main Dreamforce site contains a wealth of information on tracks / sessions and other events. By role and time, you can discover the best sessions for any area of interest. We are also excited to offer dreamforce.appirio.com for a couple of reasons: First, there are hundreds of sessions and events at Dreamforce, and it's not possible to capture the all of it even when attending. Second, we wanted to help bring the creative energy of the ecosystem to help explain fundamental concepts like - what is cloud computing? All through the event we'll capture images, interviews, reviews and videos from the event. This year online and live come together as the Dreamforce facebook page, twitter, chat and phone can all be connected to the live Service Cloud Call Center that will be operating out of the salesforce.com campground.

Number 3 - Go to sessions to get insight, and after hours events to create (business) relationships

300+ sessions at Dreamforce allow any level, function, or experience level to find a path through the event. One of the most unique parts about the event is the number of customers presenting the details of how they got value from a specific feature, function, module or initiative related to salesforce.com. These same experts, and many specialists from salesforce.com itself, are then wandering around the Expo hall, the Global Gala, numerous spontaneous evening events and of course, the exclusive Appirio event. (co-sponsored with salesforce.com and Google). Use these interactions to introduce yourself, ask questions, or just share experiences. We have had numerous customers meet at Dreamforce and stay in touch with their peers throughout the year.

Number 2 - Get Your Hands on Something

Dreamforce offers a volunteer opportunity with the foundation, deep pre-conference training, hand-on workshops, opportunities to get certified, an entire expo and salesforce campground, birds of a feather lunches, a force.com developer zone, and much much more. If you leave Dreamforce without actually "doing" anything, you've missed one of the joys of a cloud computing conference and the biggest difference between this event and any SAPPHIRE or Oracle OpenWorld you have been to.

Number 1 - Come See Appirio at Booth #616!

We do believe we have more experience with helping enterprises move to the cloud than anyone in the industry. More of our customers will be presenting at Dreamforce than any other Salesforce partner. We have been consistently first with real world applications using platform technologies like Apex and Visualforce, integrations to complementary clouds like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. We've built one of the largest scale SaaS ISV applications built 100% on force.com (Appirio PS Enterprise), and have similar experience building apps on Google and Amazon. We can help your business determine how to use salesforce.com, force.com, Google Apps and the broader cloud ecosystem to dramatically change how you think about technology and business. Come talk to us about how!

PS - If that's not enough, check out our cloud computing video contest or pick up a great cloud t-shirt at our booth and wear it around the conference for a chance to and win $1000! (Keep your eyes peeled for clues on where we will be handing out prizes on Dreamforce Central)