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Salesforce.com's Benioff Disses Windows 8, Oracle
An anonymous reader writes "Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is the latest to predict Windows 8 will be a disaster for Microsoft, but for a different reason than some others: he says that Windows is simply irrelevant in the new era of cloud computing and bring-your-own-devices (BYOD), which will become clear to corporate IT decision makers when they confront the upgrade decision. Of course, this conveniently dovetails with Salesforce's market position, so consider the source. Another interesting development is the growing rivalry between Benioff and his old boss Larry Ellison; Salesforce.com is a longtime Oracle shop, but they have just announced intentions to hire 40-50 PostgreSQL developers."
In addition to their cloudy-cloudness offerings, they've been anti-MS in other respects, directing some nastiness at microsofts old CRM solution.
Oddly, their doc merges only work right with IE, and they're usually about 3 versions behind on working Office plugins.
Not the finest development team on earth, in my opinion.
And open-source is where business wants to invest, (even though business still wants to buy Real support).
Migrating away from Oracle to something like PostgreSQL is just being prudent while mitigating costs (and strategic risks).
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Windows (and, by extension, desktop computing) is irrelevant because people have iPads. Seriously, this guy is completely out of touch. It may be great for the CEO who never has to do any real work with a computer, but an iPad is wholly unsuitable for anything other than Angry Birds and checking your Facebook. It's a media consumption device, not something used to create and manipulate spreadsheets. The fact that "Windows is irrelevant" because of "the cloud" speaks to his complete misunderstanding of the technology.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
spammers going to federal prison, microsoft irrelevant, rightraven screwed... what a fucking cool day in the industry. and it's before 10:00am. WOW.
^^ I yet have to see a tablet that can keep up with twin octocores and a set of Quadros. Then again, that's technology that's used for real work.
Until Apple, and Google, or any other alternative device manufacturer actually understands the regulatory environment that all business operates under (and I do mean under), a traditional desktop/laptop experience, even if it is delivered virtually via something like Citrix, will be a requirement. Furthermore, the complete failure of Apple to understand the need to manage assets centrally, without Apple's interference, will keep them in the toy realm. No real business gets done on the iPad, regardless of what you fanbois believe.
More than the absence of the Start button, the Win 8 GUI will suffer from its lack of visual breathing space. Yeah, there's still apparently a nice selection of wallpapers, better than the default you'd get with the OSx, but the Start screen itself suffocates you with its billboard-like tiles.
Win XP had this refreshing image of a rolling green field beneath a blue skiy, the promise of a weekend escape into the country. Now the same office worker looking at the Win 8 start screen will see nothing but the loud artificial colors of the city. Is it that why MS had called it The Metro? Because it resembled those gaudy billboards at a subway station competing for the rush-hour commuter's fleeting attention?
What Mr. Benioff is forgetting is that Windows 8 is a throw-away version of Windows. Big business is too busy moving to Windows 7 from XP right now, they were going to skip Windows 8 no matter how good or bad it was! Microsoft has a long history of playing catch-up, and then overtaking the competition long after the competition thought they had the game sewed up. Windows 8 may be a colossal dud, but don't count Microsoft out yet.
It has been a long time in evolving this way, but I think it is finally arriving to that point.
The days of the PC are coming to an end. The PC itself will still be around, of course, but it will be relegated to what is should have always been -- a data and service access device.
The thing is that Microsoft really seized into an opportunity by making itself the one main OS. We all watched as Microsoft built its Windows into what we see today. Protocol standards being embraced and extrended all over. The protocols only Windows used being adapted into standards and implemented under Linux. Document formats... most of us have witnessed the unfolding.
But with the web and the push for standards, even Microsoft could not hold off the inevitability. Microsoft wants badly to own and control the standards platforms everyone operates from, but they are developing faster than Microsoft can maintain while at the same time maintain its core products and services.
Microsoft is still very entrenched and they are still playing their strategies hard and will slow the downhill slide as people and business begin to favor and demand support for devices which are not PCs running MS Windows. All Microsoft phones and tablet efforts so far have been rejected and determined to be a failure and all predictions say this will not change. Microsoft is unable to leverage its PC monopoly to grow into other markets as people are generally untrusting of anything with Microsoft on the labels of handhelds and other devices... and if they tried, they will no doubt find themselves back in court.
I find it difficult to imagine anything other than Microsoft shrinking down to its core and waiting for its next opportunity or simply being killed off by the next thing... the next thing which hasn't come around just yet, but it's not hard to imagine some form of Android stepping in.
The real question is: is the service provider with whom you store your data more reliable than you or your IT team in providing stable data access? Everything else is just paranoia and habit.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Salesforce don't like the whole pay for it once and keep it model. They like the pay once a month (SaaS) model. They are also pretty shitty at giving data back when you want it. You can have it but it's a bastard to get it out.
BYOD + Salesforce is a wet dream for them which is why they're spinning it like this.
Unfortunately, a blanket statement here: It's just a 100% fucking retarded model that needs to go to hell.
You no longer have control over your data (lock in, data protection, availability, regulatory requirements).
You can't access it reliably *all of the time* (network issues, "cloud" outages).
You don't always know where your data is (Data protection issues).
You purchase purely a portal device rather than a general purpose computer (control, availability).
Your support sucks (availability).
At the end of the day, your cost cutting results in loss of your data, poor availability, data protection issues and legal exposure. Also do you want your clap-infested users' devices plugged into your network, authenticating against your web applications? Are you sure your business can handle all that?
I'd take Windows 8 (not RT) with local storage over the above any day and put it in a corporate environment. Hell, I'd even buy an Oracle license over it.
There's another factor if you're using cloud services for day-to-day operations - internet connectivity uptime.
The cloud service provider could be up, but if your internet connection is down you can't use the services.
In many countries the internet connectivity uptime is worse than internal server uptime when managed by a not too crappy IT team.
It's fine if the cloud services are for public facing operations - in which case the public user's internet connectivity is usually not your problem, they don't blame you if their connection is down.
From experience (I used to work for a well known SaaS provider but left when I saw what an absolute state it was all in), the teenager who lives next door to you and plays WoW on his infested laptop is less likely to fuck up then an average SaaS provider. As per any business, their objective is to maximise profit and to do this, they take seriously big risks and hope the hell the string and sticky tape doesn't go snap. When it does, you have no recourse as there are contracts to protect the profit-mongering. Using a "service provider" as you call them is akin to shutting your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears and taking a whiz.
If you do your own IT in house, you have control over the standards and where your standards are implemented.
The Cloud won't go down, that's the beauty of this whole plan. The person running The Cloud will just put their data on The Cloud, so it will be self-perpetuating. But what about catastrophic hardware failure scenarios at his "The Cloud" datacenters? There won't BE any datacenters, you fool, the engineers will BYOD which will communicate with The Cloud without the need for LAN's or WAN's by using wireless 4G.
It's Brilliant! It's The Cloud.
(Seriously, read the article. This guy is smoking crack.)
Who are you and why should I care?
Enjoy the smartphone & tablet bubble while it lasts, but CYA because you never know when it'll come suddenly crashing down. Over night, Apple will go from the king of all companies, to one that is painfully obviously over-valued with stock prices in a decline that seems like it won't ever end. And analysts will rant on about how obvious it was that Apple's non-diversified monoculture was such a bad idea, and claim they said so, before.
That's not to say smartphones or tablets will be going away... just that there's room and money for everyone ONLY while the segment is expanding like crazy. As soon as that growth even slows, the crunch will be sudden and extremely painful, as companies fall daily, and all the hype that helped keep accelerating the bubble suddenly does a 180 and fuels the crash even more quickly. And let's not forget, that the guys left for dead during the bubble will be revered by the business community for their stable strategy that didn't jump headlong into the hype.
Of course there will be plenty of cheap hardware at fire-sale prices to play with, for quite a while. And soon, the world will be restored to a much more sane place, where the distortion of the previous bubble is forgotten, and some other bubble starts growing.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
But the reality is that BYOD does not take off
BYOD did take off. In 2008 Macs were used in a tiny percentage of companies outside of artistic departments. Today something like 30% have to support Mac. In 2008 companies had RIM smartphones that were centrally purchased. Today they have iPhones and Android often bought with subsidy. In 2008 companies that had tablets had specialized ones. Today over 20% of all companies have to support iPad in a semi-official way.
As for Apple, Apple doesn't want to be an enterprise vendor. They don't want the business.
I used windows 8 preview and basically same performance wise as windows 7, but I haven't tried out the RTM so now I really can't judge it. If you don't want to switch back and forth between the metroUI just install the start menu button for free. Only time will tell if windows 8 will be any useful on the Desktop. Vista was not that bad and a lot more stable than windows xp but you did have to disable some services to speed things up.
Oh good! BYOD! Does that mean that the user who's bringing her own device is now responsible for understanding how it works, and does that mean that she's responsible for taking care of her own crapware that she installs on her own device so she can learn 1 weird old trick instead of me?
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Certainly not a shill. I mean you could be a paid shill from apple couldn't you? I just rather like it because for once they managed to make windows work properly. I've been plagued for years with shit that doesn't work from Microsoft. This just ain't one of those things, which to be honest surprises the crap out of me. CP was a turd but RTM with the recent app updates is spot on. Bear in mind I'm running it on proper kit (Sony 22" AIO touch screen).
This makes sense for sales reps. Their job is to talk to people and convince them to buy. Maybe take the actual order. That doesn't require much input or local computing power, but it requires convenient access to catalog and customer data. This is a business application that maps well to small screen mobile devices.
To put out a counter-point out: I've worked for two SaaS providers, and one where I had direct access to both our internal and the customer application and network information. The vast majority of cases, the issue was with the customer's network and application. In fact, at the first company, our service went down twice: when some moron dug up a fiber cable in Germany, and once when the company running our main data center decided to fuck up their routing table. At the second company, we had one major outage (more than a few hours) when some moron decided to propagate a network change without going through the proper approval process.
Is there spit and duct tape involved? Sure. Then again - that's not the real question. It's whether there's more duct tape and spit in your own organization or not.
From the numbers I saw, overall availability is hanging out 99.9% combined. Now, my laptops, both personal and professional, have already suffered more downtime - whether it is upgrades taking them down, maintenance requiring some amount of trouble-shooting and investigation (damn you Java).
If you do your own IT, you're also stuck with what resources you have. Most companies I know don't prioritize IT. Most people don't prioritize IT. For those, it makes sense to not have everything be in-house. That said, the mantra that you SHOULD put everything onto some outside server is nonsense. Even more so if they tell you that you don't need backups or local copies. If anyone ever tells you that, run screaming in the other direction.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Sorry, but sales is a one time event. It's the support team/engineers/subcontractors/employees that create "real work" and keep said work.
GP's point is that Marc Benioff doesn't sell software for those people, so why should he care?
Breakfast served all day!
At my company we're building our application delivery model to work from anywhere on any device. You could run on a tablet, phone, computer running any OS. Thanks to Citrix.
Is it in production? If not, your company is in that interesting situation of building today products according to yesterday's vision of tomorrow.
lucm, indeed.
Windows is going to be the dominant operating system in the corporate setting for many years to come. Yes, people will have their little smart phones and tablets but they cannot replace the power of a desktop computer - at least not today. I see people in meetings smugly walking in with their iPads only to quickly fumble trying to take notes on the thing. It's fine for looking at stuff, not so good for creating stuff.
Benioff takes a jab at Ellison every chance he gets. Can't say I blame him because Ellison may be one of the few people that's a bigger jackass than Benioff is - and that's saying a lot.
What people need to remember about Salesforce is that CRM is not a mission critical application. That's why it works ok on a cloud architecture. If there is an outage it's not the end of the world. Now imagine putting your whole Financials or Supply Chain system on a cloud based system and there is an outage or a security breach. You're fucked. Short story - cloud works for some stuff and not others.
Benioff - shut up and get back on your Segway and stick your thumb back up your ass where it belongs.
I work at a SaaS business and I have the complete opposite experience. I have a boss/owner who is in it for the long run. I realize that if our service sucks I need to find another job.
nosig today
That's not universally the case. Some of them have put a more sophisticated Active Directory client out there so that Macs can connect. Many of them have made services which available to desktops at the UNIX level, which allows Macs to connect. Many of them provide instructions for employees on how to use Macs to do various things.
To a lesser extent this is true of Android, iOS.
Is this Postgres's coming-out year?
Talking about multiversion concurrency is a sure way to lose your audience.
Much better to be able to just say "Salesforce.com uses it". Answers all questions, and vaults it up to the level of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM".
Not to mention all the enterprisey changes which I suppose we could expect to Postgres.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
If his argument is to be believed then all desktop OS's would be irrelevant with the new BYOD trend. I don't believe it for a second. I highly doubt that my Windows Phone or Surface (let alone an iPad) is going to run Matlab, Maple, Visual Studio, Eclipse or any other massive engineering suite any time soon.