World’s largest social networking service selects world’s leading enterprise cloud for CRM

SAN FRANCISCO, July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced that Facebook (http://www.Facebook.com/facebook) has selected Salesforce CRM (http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation) to manage its fast-growing sales operations.

Facebook Looks to the Cloud to Increase Sales Process Efficiency

• Facebook evaluated the pros and cons of enhancing its own system or selecting a cloud computing CRM system and went with the Sales Cloud 2 for the inherent benefits of cloud computing, particularly its quick implementation time and the ability to scale along with the company’s rapid growth.
• Facebook has deployed the system across its sales operation teams along with its developer relations to automate complex workflow and approval processes. The system integrates with half a dozen existing systems.

Comments on the News:

• Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook commented: “Facebook and salesforce.com share a common vision for helping people connect and share information more efficiently. Salesforce.com’s cloud model was the perfect fit for us – with our current growth trajectory and future sales goals, we needed a product that will scale with our growing business.”
• Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com commented: “Facebook joins the thousands of companies managing their enterprise sales teams in the cloud, enabling them to focus on their fast growing business rather than the hardware and software to support it.”

Additional Resources:

• More information on Sales Cloud 2 is available here: http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation/
• Become a fan of salesforce.com at http://www.facebook.com/SALESFORCE
• Follow @salesforce on Twitter

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s platform and CRM applications (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate with their customers, including:

• The Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management
• The Service Cloud, for customer service and support solutions
• Chatter, for social collaboration
• The Force.com platform, for custom application development
• The AppExchange, the world’s leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing applications

Salesforce.com offers the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing. As of April 30, 2010, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 77,300 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all.  Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Copyright (c) 2010 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the “no software” logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE salesforce.com

Costs Expected to Fall for Back-Testing of Algorithmic Trading Systems

NEW YORK and SAN MATEO, Calif., Jun 22, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) — The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.  (NDAQ 19.00, +0.00, +0.00%) , the world’s largest exchange company, and Xignite, Inc., the leading cloud services provider of on-demand data distribution technologies, today announced that NASDAQ has selected the XigniteOnDemand platform to build NASDAQ Data-On-Demand, a cloud-based computing solution for historical tick data distribution.

NASDAQ plans to launch Data-on-Demand in the second half of 2010 to provide easy and flexible access to large amounts of detailed historical NASDAQ Level 1 trade and quote data for all U.S.-listed securities. Tick data is increasingly used in quantitative environments for back testing of algorithmic trading strategies. As the securities trading industry pushes the limits of high frequency trading, algorithms require ever more rigorous back testing and fine tuning based on actual historical data. Obtaining and collecting tick data can be onerous and time-consuming as firms are required to establish feeds and maintain large amounts of data on-hand. By providing this data on-demand and allowing it to be purchased on-line, Data-on-Demand will make it easier than ever for firms to back-test their strategies.

“We are always looking to reduce costs of consuming data,” said Randall Hopkins, NASDAQ OMX’s Senior Vice President of Global Data Products. “Today our customers spend a large amount on technology infrastructure, not the market data itself. With Data-on-Demand, we want to drastically cut data management costs by running the technology infrastructure on the cloud for our clients and delivering to them the data they need, when they need it, and how they need it.”

Unlike traditional means of market data delivery, such as feeds and files, on-demand market data distribution gives applications a way to cherry pick the specific subset of data that the application needs with pinpoint accuracy. Instead of combing through very large data sets of historical tick data, developers will be able to program their applications to select very specific data sets and obtain them on-demand and process them instantly. Data-on-Demand will also allow clients to download large tick data subsets on a scheduled basis.

“NASDAQ has decided to bring significant cost savings to one of the industry’s highest priority requirements–timely access to high quality market replay information–by leveraging the industry’s most powerful technology innovation today–on-demand cloud computing,” said Stephane Dubois, CEO of Xignite. “This clearly shows NASDAQ’s commitment to staying ahead of their customers’ needs and reducing their costs. We are thrilled to partner with them on this industry-leading solution.”

“We’re excited about working with Xignite to launch Data-on-Demand,” said Mr. Hopkins. “We had experience using the cloud to store and manage the large volumes of data we collect every day, and we needed someone to help make this data accessible to our clients in an easy, scalable and reliable manner. Xignite’s proven technology and years of experience with on-demand market data and cloud computing will give us a tremendous jumpstart, saving us at least a year of development time.”

Xignite developed XigniteOnDemand specifically to help financial marketplaces grow revenues for their market data businesses and accelerate product launches. XigniteOnDemand includes a complete, end-to-end solution ranging from a high-performance, scalable cloud computing technology platform to professional services for turnkey sales, marketing and customer support.

About NASDAQ OMX

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. is the world’s largest exchange company. It delivers trading, exchange technology and public company services across six continents, with more than 3,600 listed companies. NASDAQ OMX offers multiple capital raising solutions to companies around the globe, including its U.S. listings market, NASDAQ OMX Nordic, NASDAQ OMX Baltic, NASDAQ OMX First North, and the U.S. 144A sector. The company offers trading across multiple asset classes including equities, derivatives, debt, commodities, structured products and exchange-traded funds. NASDAQ OMX technology supports the operations of over 70 exchanges, clearing organizations and central securities depositories in more than 50 countries. NASDAQ OMX Nordic and NASDAQ OMX Baltic are not legal entities but describe the common offering from NASDAQ OMX exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Iceland, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. For more information about NASDAQ OMX, visit http://www.nasdaqomx.com . Please follow NASDAQ OMX on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/nasdaqomx ) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/nasdaqomx ).

About Xignite

Xignite is the leading provider of on-demand market data and on-demand data distribution technology–fulfilling more than three billion service requests per month. Xignite offers the broadest selection of financial Web services available today with more than 50 solutions covering global equities, commodities, currencies, options, fixed income, analyst predictions, company fundamentals and news. Xignite solutions power mission-critical applications for front, back and mid-office, investor relations, dashboards, e-commerce, wireless applications and financial websites for more than 700 global clients, including Citi, GE, Bank of New York Mellon, Wells Fargo, ING, Exxon Mobil, Forbes.com, kaChing.com, Wolfram|Alpha, Seeking Alpha, Starbucks, and Wendy’s. For more information, please visit www.xignite.com or call 1-866-XML-SOAP ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/06/nasdaq-and-xignite-to-provide-on-demand-tick-data-via-cloud-computing-platform/feed/ 4 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/06/utest-wins-a-spot-on-alwaysons-east-list-of-top-100-companies/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/06/utest-wins-a-spot-on-alwaysons-east-list-of-top-100-companies/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:04:12 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=1597

With Google, IBM and Microsoft suddenly racing to deliver Software-as-a-Service to small businesses, Marc Benioff, outspoken co-founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, couldn’t be more tickled.

Benioff has been championing the service as disruptive technology for more than a decade. Technology Live caught up with Benioff shortly after he delivered this keynote presentation at a Google event promoting Google Apps Marketplace. Excerpts of that interview:

TL: So what do you make of all of these clever, discrete hosted services suddenly becoming available to small business?

Benioff: No one has to buy software anymore. The software has gone online. That’s where the software lives. It’s not anything more than that.

TL: So what’s driving this?

Benioff: Users are just completely frustrated with the lack of innovation that has occurred in traditional business software. You look at products like Microsoft SharePoint or IBM’s Lotus Notes and they’re designed for systems whose days are gone by.

TL: Why are you such an enthusiastic backer of Google Apps Marketplace?

Benioff: Google Apps Marketplace is kind of like Apple’s iPhone apps store, except it’s for business software. The idea is that customers can choose from a lot of different vendors and technologies and easily integrate them. That’s where the power is. There are a lot of different ways you can integrate these services together.

TL: Surely you’re not ruling out Microsoft and IBM in this emerging space?

Benioff: No. I’m not ruling out Microsoft and IBM, but they have done a terrible job over the last decade. That’s just material fact. Certainly their investors have paid the price for their inability to innovate and their attempts to try to hold on to the old paradigms instead of innovating aggressively in the Internet. It’s not about Microsoft or IBM; they’re just trying to figure out how they can tactically catch up.

TL: Where do you see this going in the next year or two?

Benioff: We are entering the second generation of cloud computing, call it Cloud 2.0. It’s about enabling a whole new level of capabilities for business users delivered on the next generation of BlackBerries, iPhones and iPads. It’s about all these cloud services providing a greater level of collaboration, social computing, communication, entertainment and information management.

TL: Do you see cloud computing emerging as an X-factor; can it help small business boost the economic recovery?

Benioff: Yes, this is fantastic for small business because it gives them the power of big business. We have large customers and we have small customers. Cisco has 50,000 users with us, Dell has 80,000 users. But we have lots of customers with five users, 10 users and 30 users. They’re all running the exact same code from the exact same servers. It used to be small business lined up over here to buy this software, medium business lined up over here and large business lined up over here. Cloud computing blurs those lines. All businesses are now able to get this kind of capability with a level of equality that’s never been possible before. It makes it a more democratic world.

By Byron Acohido at USAToday
]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/salesforces-benioff-microsoft-ibm-play-catchup-in-cloud-computing/feed/ 5 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/01/cloudcomputingblogs-saas-list/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/01/cloudcomputingblogs-saas-list/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:37:39 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=329

1
cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/
CloudComputing
Journal

2
http://www.cloudcomputingblog.com/
To
provide good coverage of what the Cloud Computing trend makes
possible from an ordinary user’s perspective.

3
http://cloudcomputing.blogspot.com/
India
Needs Public Policy And Service Innovation And Not Web 2.0 Companies

4
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/08/18/cloud-computing-blogs/
A list
of the blogs we find worthwhile in a sector of the data center world

5
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9924552-7.html
New
security blog on cloud computing

6
http://blogs.msdn.com/cloud/
All
about Cloud computing tools

7
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/blogs
How
cloud computing changed internal IT in 2009,

8
http://blogs.cisco.com/tag/cloud+computing
The
term “cloud computing” covers many topics. One hot area
is infrastructure as a service (IaaS),

9
http://blog.gogrid.com/2008/08/26/helpful-listing-of-cloud-computing-blogs/

10
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/10/26/cloud-computing-at-red-hat-and-novell/
Cloud
Computing at Red Hat and Novell

11
http://www.infosysblogs.com/cloudcomputing/
The
commoditization of technology has reached its pinnacle with the
advent of the recent paradigm of Cloud Computing.

12
http://blog.rightscale.com/2008/05/26/define-cloud-computing/
Define
Cloud Computing,Applications in the cloud,Platforms in the
cloud,Infrastructure in the cloud

13
http://blogs.gartner.com/thomas_bittman/
Virtualization
Unlocks Cloud Computing,A Better Cloud Computing Analogy

14
http://blog.vmengine.net/

15
http://www.cloudave.com/
.

16
http://blog.mariaspinola.com/
Cloud
Computing Implementation Road-Map

17
http://blog.sciodev.com/
6
Points for Successful SaaS

18
http://fobregona.blogspot.com/
SAAS,
CLOUD COMPUTING,

19
http://softwareyservicio.wordpress.com/
Saas -
Software como servicio

20
http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/Default.aspx
Pursuit
of Intercloud is Practical not Premature

21
http://blogs.gartner.com/eric-knipp/
Richness,
Reach, and the RIA Marketplace

22
http://swathidharshananaidu.posterous.com/
Despite
possible privacy and security issues, cloud computing has been taking
over,

23
http://footprintsinthecloud.blogspot.com/
Information
for SMBs about Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service solutions.

24
http://www.ips.co.uk/2009/07/what-is-cloud-computing-.html
What
is Cloud Computing ?

25
http://john-savageau.com/2009/12/17/a-cloud-wish-list-for-2010/
A
Cloud Computing Wish List for 2010

26
http://externalidades.net/
cloud
computing.

27
http://blogs.msdn.com/dachou/

28
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/search/label/cloud%20computing
Cloud
adoption and getting voted best mid-market solution at the Mid-sized
Enterprise Summit

29
http://blog.visi.com/2009/12/14/visi-comments-on-cloud-computing-in-mn-cpa-publication/
VISI
Comments on Cloud Computing in MN CPA Publication

30
http://www.privatecloud.com/
An
industry destination for news, resources, and conversation on
enterprise cloud computing

31
http://www.allaboutit.eu/
arts
of the IT industry expect 2010 to be the year of cloud computing (the
other parts expect it to be the year of VDI

32
http://kevinljackson.blogspot.com/
cloud
will provide a “faster, better, cheaper, and safer”
Information Technology solution for the IC.

33
http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/
Conversant
Media Leverages The Rackspace Cloud For Next-Generation Content

34
http://www.webcloudworld.com/

35
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=1133&tag=content;col1
Fixing
IT in the cloud computing era

36
http://www.davidezordan.net/blog/
Silverlight,
Cloud Computing, Programming and New Technologies

37
http://zalandas.com/blog/
Believers
in cloud computing. Yes, we strongly support Google Apps (and nearly
everything Google).

38
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/cloudview/?lang=en

39
http://www.examiner.com/x-33449-Chicago-Cloud-Computing-Examiner?showbio

40
http://peteryared.blogspot.com/

41
http://kevintunis.com/
Microsoft
Online Services has Some Limitations

42
http://rosalynmetz.com/ideas/2009/12/07/creating-an-ebs-backed-ami-in-the-cloud/
Creating
an EBS Backed AMI in the Cloud

43
http://blog.elasticserver.com/

44
http://smattey.wordpress.com/
Social
computing apps and platform9

45
http://www.icomplete.com/blog/
The
Future of Telecoms – Cloud is the Answer

46
http://blog.cloud404.com/
WPA
Cracker is a cloud cracking service for penetration testers and
network auditors who need to check the security of WPA-PSK protected
wireless networks.

47
http://blog.truecloud.com/
2010
Predictions for Cloud Computing

48
http://expanz.wordpress.com/
2010
– team in place, time to accelerate.

49
http://gevaperry.typepad.com/
Thoughts
on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances

50
http://cdnn.wordpress.com/category/cloud-computing/ ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/01/cloudcomputingblogs-saas-list/feed/ 6 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/12/2010-the-year-of-cloud-computing-and-the-saas-market/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/12/2010-the-year-of-cloud-computing-and-the-saas-market/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:05:04 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=299

Cloud computing is still more attractive to venture capitalists than it is to enterprise IT buyers, and that’s unlikely to change in 2010. As IT buyers warm to the idea and implementation of cloud computing, 2010 is going to prove to be a very big year for cloud-computing M&A as big-fish vendors like VMWare, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle round out their cloud product portfolios with little-fish innovators.

Computing (and M&A) heads for the cloud

Some, like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, suggest that cloud computing is simply a fad, one that attempts to solve many of the same problems that SOA, EDI, etc. already attempted to fix.

Tell that to the buyers. Gartner expects the cloud-related SaaS market to top $8 billion in 2009, which suggests that real customers paying real money.

They may not be paying enough, however, to support the mushrooming cloud vendor marketplace. Not yet.

Industry insiders are predicting a shakeout as pre-recession venture funding runs out for many of the early cloud vendors, forcing them into the arms of buyers or bankruptcy courts.

This is the inevitable separation of wheat from chaff, and it’s a very good thing for an industry that has been long on hype and short on delivery to date.

But don’t confuse the hype with vaporware. And don’t for a minute think that any of the big (or small) vendors has a complete offering yet. As IDC research director Dan Yachi posits:

Full Source ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/12/2010-the-year-of-cloud-computing-and-the-saas-market/feed/ 5 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/12/top-10-cloud-computing-flashpoints-of-2009-cloudtweaks-com/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/12/top-10-cloud-computing-flashpoints-of-2009-cloudtweaks-com/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:33:50 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=273

By Jeffrey M. Kaplan
E-Commerce Times

A brief history of SaaS and cloud computing in 2009 suggests that it has arrived as a viable mainstream business model; that the market is volatile, and missteps won’t be overlooked; that there’s still plenty of room for innovation; and that it will be a growing force to be reckoned with in 2010.

Virtualization Solutions
Optimize, Simplify, & Save Today. Learn About Microsoft Solutions.

Plenty of industry observers are already issuing their predictions for 2010, but I think it is worth taking a look back at the past year’s events to see how quickly the Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing marketplace is evolving.

So, following are 10 events that I consider bellwethers of the rapid evolution process, which could be important indicators of the future direction of the SaaS and cloud computing industry.
Wheeling and Dealing

1. Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) surpasses US$1 billion in revenue. Hitting this financial milestone clearly shows that SaaS has become mainstream and is a scalable business model.

2. Xactly Acquires Centive. Despite SaaS industry growth, an inevitable market consolidation has begun with this merger of two key players in the on-demand sales Download Free eBook – The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales compensation market. Also, Salary.com buys the assets of Makana Solutions and NetSuite acquires head-to-head professional services automation (PSA) competitors OpenAir and QuickArrow.

3. LucidEra fails. The demise of one of the pioneers of the SaaS business intelligence and analytics market shows the willingness of VCs to walk away from even the most prominent SaaS players.

4. Intacct establishes alliance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and its CPA2Biz subsidiary. This partnership agreement illustrates the growing acceptance of SaaS, as the association broadcasts its endorsement of Intacct’s on-demand financial management Take the worry out of managing your enterprise applications. Click to learn how. solution as the preferred alternative to traditional financial applications to its 45,000 member CPA firms and their 350,000 SMB clients.

5. Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) offers to buy Sun. Despite Larry Ellison’s rants that SaaS will never be a profitable business model, Oracle uses its proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) as a catalyst to promote its growing cloud computing capabilities.

Experiments and Validation

6. Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) fortify SLAs. Faced with a steady stream of service outages, both Amazon and Google have introduced new service level agreements with more “teeth” to appease the continuing concerns of IT and business decision-makers, and to fend off the challenges of a growing number of cloud computing competitors.

7. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) becomes a SaaS reseller. After being a showcase user of Salesforce.com solutions, Dell becomes a Salesforce.com channel partner, offering customers access to AppExchange SaaS vendors.

8. Marc Benioff Speaks at Oracle OpenWorld. Benioff’s presentation promotes the business benefits of on-demand and on-premise software integration in hybrid operating environments, recasting SaaS as a natural progression of the market rather than a revolutionary overthrow of legacy applications. (This speech may also be the preamble to an Oracle takeover of Salesforce.com.)

9. Salesforce.com unveils its social computing strategy, Chatter. Rather than simply tightening its integration with Facebook and Twitter, Salesforce.com decides to build its own enterprise-class alternative, which is met with mixed reviews at Dreamforce.

10. Gartner (NYSE: IT) identifies cloud computing the top strategic technology for 2010. There is no better lagging indicator of key industry trends than Gartner prognostications, which give them further validation and greater visibility.

Read Full Source ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/12/top-10-cloud-computing-flashpoints-of-2009-cloudtweaks-com/feed/ 2 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/08/gogrid-announces-version-20-cloud-computing-service/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/08/gogrid-announces-version-20-cloud-computing-service/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:48:02 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=179

GoGrid Announces Version 2.0

Today GoGrid, the Cloud Computing service from ServePath, released version 2.0 of its award-winning Cloud Computing Infrastructure solution. With this release, GoGrid users now have the ability to create personal server images, known as MyGSIs. MyGSI stands for “personal GoGrid Server Image,” a “Golden Master” server image that can be customized, saved and stored for future deployments. Users are now able to create new servers from stored MyGSIs via the GoGrid web portal or API quickly and easily.

We are extremely excited about this innovative new GoGrid release
This is an important development in the Cloud Computing marketplace, and further demonstrates our visionary approach to providing Cloud Computing functionality and features that our customers desire.
“We are extremely excited about this innovative new GoGrid release,” said John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of GoGrid and ServePath. “This is an important development in the Cloud Computing marketplace, and further demonstrates our visionary approach to providing Cloud Computing functionality and features that our customers desire.”

The creation of a MyGSI is an extremely simple 3-step process. First add an Image Sandbox, second, configure and prepare the Image Sandbox and third, save the Image Sandbox as a MyGSI. When a user needs to create a new Windows or Linux server based on the pre-configured MyGSI, they simply choose the saved image, fill in a few details, and instantiate the server in minutes within the GoGrid cloud.
There are several benefits and advantages of using a MyGSI to deploy servers within the GoGrid cloud:

Source Oncloudcomputing ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2009/08/gogrid-announces-version-20-cloud-computing-service/feed/ 2