Linux News: Leadership

Salesforce.com, VCs Create Seed Fund for Future Clients
October 04, 2007

Silicon Valley venture capitalists Bay Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners have pooled resources with Salesforce.com to roll out a fund that will invest in companies' development activities on Salesforce.com's platform. Typical investments will equal about $500,000 each, totaling $25 million over the next three years.

Developing a Smarter Sales Organization
October 01, 2007

Today's sales manager is faced with a myriad of challenges in an increasing hostile selling environment -- deals stuck in the pipeline, frequently missed sales "commits," sales people not hitting quota, and high sales employee turnover are just a few of the issues that the beleaguered sales managers must tackle day in and day out. Improving sales effectiveness is a double-edged problem.

The On-Demand Cult
September 26, 2007

During Dreamforce there was a panel discussion for media and the financial and industry analysts. Some of Salesforce.com's senior executives were there for a panel discussion, which included Chief Financial Officer Steve Cakebread, cofounder and Executive Vice President Parker Harris and Vice President of Marketing George Hu, as well as company CEO and founder Marc Benioff.

Gartner Summit: State of CRM Is Strong
September 25, 2007

Gartner provided welcome news to the CRM industry earlier this month when it released estimates that overall CRM revenue would rise by about $1 billion annually through 2011; for this year, CRM software revenues were projected to exceed $7.4 billion -- a 14 percent increase from 2006.

Wal-Mart Offers Road Map for Greener Supply Chain
September 24, 2007

With an eye toward minimizing its carbon footprint, Wal-Mart Stores will partner with the Carbon Disclosure Project to measure the amount of energy used to create products throughout its supply chain. An initial pilot project will focus on seven commonly used product categories and will examine the energy used during the procurement, manufacturing and distribution processes.

Dreamforce Ideas
September 12, 2007

I saw Marc Benioff in New York just after Labor Day. He was in town for various business reasons and hosted a dinner for a group of customers, analysts and journalists. It was a very interesting group though also informal -- there were no speeches or presentations and no need to drag out the safe harbor statement.

Give Credit Where It's Due
July 25, 2007

Last week, the train officially pulled into the station; we got a call from Tranquility Base -- choose your metaphor. Salesforce.com announced availability of Summer '07 which included final delivery of the long-awaited Apex programming language -- the last piece of the developer platform. From here, who knows where we go?

Netflix, QVC Rated E-Tail Customer Service Champs
June 01, 2007

Video rental purveyor Netflix and TV shopping channel QVC led a customer satisfaction index of the top 100 online retailers released Friday by ForeSee Results, of Ann Arbor, Mich. The index, calculated twice a year by the firm, ranked the Web sites of Netflix and QVC, with scores of 85, as the kings of customer satisfaction among Internet retail's top 100 revenue makers.