Salesforce.com and VMware announced a joint “exciting” announcement on April 27th. Register on www.vmforce.com. Scope of the announcement – “…make an exciting joint product announcement on the future of cloud computing”. It’s not that hard to undercover what is going to be announced.
For many years Salesforce offered an on-premise version their software for very large enterprises. But for many reasons problems and management of this version was a pain for Salesforce, as such the decision was to cancel the programme. Since Microsoft came up with their “Power of choice” model for Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Salesforce has been trying to convince us that there is not any cloud or hosted model in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “Salesforce is the cloud application”.
Is must be a very odd situation for Salesforce to include a relationship for VMware to add on-premise capabilities. One could argue that the business model of Salesforce is under disruption or simply; they reached their maximum market. No matter what; Microsoft did come with the right model, and even Salesforce have to add on-premise to their business model. They could not themselves so they turned to VMware – who recently also acquired OpenExchange; a high competitor to Microsoft Exchange. Although a relationship with VMware could deliver the “Power of choice”; the solution will be offered, yet not complete. As one would say; “Would you run Microsoft Dynamics CRM through Terminal Services as a Cloud Service”? The obvious answer is NO.
Strangely enough the market is lacking support for all Microsoft technologies. It is a very disruptive market, although it only seems to be Google owning a different strategy and challenging Microsoft. Many of the key competitor’s like Salesforce and VMware have to acquire or copy the business models of Microsoft. Sad as this turns Microsoft to do the same; just recently announced their official name for the “PINK” project, Microsoft Kin!
Let’s see what is going to be announced on the 27th 😉
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