Cloud Computing Strategies for the CIO
Jeff Kaplan talks Salesforce Chatter at Dreamforce 2009
Date: Nov 20, 2009Jeff Kaplan of THINKStrategies gave us a few moments of his time at Dreamforce 2009 to discuss the goals of Chatter, Salesforce.com's new collaboration technology service, and whether it could live up its billing as "Facebook for the enterprise."
Read the full transcript from this video below:
Jeff Kaplan talks Salesforce Chatter at Dreamforce 2009
Jeff Kaplan : Hello. I am Jeff Kaplan, from
Think Strategies.
Jo Maitland: Hello, Jeff. What do you do? What
does Think Strategies do?
Jeff Kaplan: Think Strategies is a consulting business that
I
founded back in 2001, to focus in on the transformation of
technology industry, from being product-centered to being
services-driven so that means things like software-as-a-service,
cloud computing, and managed services; we look at all of those.
Jo Maitland: SalesForce just announced this thing called
Chatter.
What is that?
Jeff Kaplan: Chatter is their new version of social networking,
what
they are referring to as social computing. It is akin to Twitter, and
Facebook, the ability to take those functionalities and bring them
into the corporate environment, to allow organizations to better
capture information, and disseminate that information across an
increasingly dispersed workforce. What it means is that they are
hoping to get greater productivity out of that group, because they
are going to be able to keep track of individual employees'
activities, the activities of their customers, as well as their
partners and competitors.
Jo Maitland: Is it Facebook for the enterprise?
Jeff Kaplan: That is exactly right.
Jo Maitland: If you were not already a SalesForce customer,
you
would not be able to use this, right? It is just for the existing SalesForce.
Jeff Kaplan: Yes. It is an add-on to the SalesForce application.
Jo Maitland: What does it do for them, from a business
perspective?
Does it increase their footprint or what?
Jeff Kaplan: Yes. What it does is it brings everything together
under
one umbrella, so to speak. Instead of having a separate personal
Facebook or Twitter account, and trying to track those independent
of the CRM application, now they can have it all integrated into one.
Jo Maitland: Anything else new at the show, that you have
heard
about so far, that we should know about?
Jeff Kaplan: I could not hear you on that one. Say it again.
Jo Maitland: Sorry. Anything else new at the show, that
has
happened so far?
Jeff Kaplan: I think the biggest news about the show is the
fact that
there are so many people here. We are still in a downward economy,
and they have over 19,000 people registered, and it feels like almost
all of them have shown up. Last year, it was about half that amount,
around 10,000 or so. It is an indication that not only is Salesforce.com
doing well, but the world is moving in the direction of software-as-a-service,
and cloud computing, and there are more and more people getting
involved with this. This shows a perfect indication of that.
Jo Maitland: Right. Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff Kaplan: My pleasure. Good to see you.
Jo Maitland: Thank you.
Jeff Kaplan: Enjoy the show.
Jo Maitland: Thank you.
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation