Guy Kawasaki to Deliver Keynote Address

CUPERTINO, Calif. – SugarCRM, the world’s fastest-growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, today announced its 6th annual SugarCon event that will bring CRM thought leaders from around the world together under one roof. The 2012 keynote speaker will be Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com, founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and columnist for the Open Forum of American Express. SugarCon, geared toward customers, partners and developers in the CRM space, will be held April 23-26, 2012 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California.

The theme of the 2012 event is “Explore the Possibilities of CRM,” where speakers will present thought-provoking sessions that inspire the audience to dig deeper into the CRM discipline. In addition to Kawasaki, this year’s speaker lineup includes:

• Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light and president of The 56 Group, LLC, an enterprise applications consulting services firm
• Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder of ThinkJar, an advisory and research think tank focused on customer strategies
• Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, social media executive education program director at UCLA, Anderson School of Business, and adjunct professor measurement of PR and marketing at Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California
• Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM

A full agenda will be available prior to the event, and SugarCRM is currently calling attendees to recommend topics and speakers to ensure that the event delivers information that conference participants demand. The event will have seven breakout tracks that tackle beginner through advanced CRM topics – CRM 101, CRM and the Cloud, CRM and the Cutting Edge: Mobile, Social Business, Solving Business Problems with the Sugar Platform, Shortcuts Through the Sugar Exchange, and Sugar U. (Sugar University).

For more information on SugarCon 2012, please visit the event web site. To register for the event, visit the registration page, and to sponsor, see the sponsorship details. To learn more about SugarCRM, become a Facebook, fan, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our YouTube channel and blog.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM makes CRM simple. As the world’s fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, SugarCRM applications have been downloaded more than ten million times and currently serve over 850,000 end users in 192 countries. Over 7,000 customers have chosen SugarCRM’s On-Site and Cloud Computing services over proprietary alternatives. SugarCRM has been recognized for its customer success and product innovation by CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, Customer Interaction Solutions and Intelligent Enterprise. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll-free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

WHEN: Feb 5-8, 2012

eXtremeCRM is ALL about building technical capacity so you can keep driving phenomenal CRM growth!

eXtremeCRM 2012 Berlin will deliver 300 – 400 level technical content in our Deploy and Extend tracks geared towards the technical people in your organization.  Here are just a few of the highlights!

We have a great line up of speakers from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product team in Redmond!

Mike Ehrenberg, Microsoft Technical Fellow and Chief Architect for Microsoft Dynamics will deliver a technical vision keynote giving insights to the future of Microsoft technologies.

Craig Dewar, Director, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Management and Eric Boocock, Sr. Technical Product Manager will to go deep on the recent fall release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (R7) and the future roadmap of Microsoft Dynamics CRM!

Murat Ozturan, Principal Program Manager Lead, will also be in Berlin to deliver technical sessions.

Marco Amoedo and Fadi El-Hennawy, both expert Technology Specialists from Microsoft EMEA will be presenting as well.

We also have a superior group of technical experts from within the Microsoft Dynamics community, who will be speaking including Ramon Tebar Bueno (Barclays), Sebastian Waksmundzki (AlfaPeople), Giorgio Garcia-Agreda (Crionet) Matt Parks (Avanade), Shan McArthur (ADXStudio), Jakub (Kuba) Skalbania (Netwise Sp. z.o.o.) and Dino Esposito, well know author and .Net expert. And the list keeps growing…

There is a fully packed agenda that can benefit partners and customers alike – here are just a few of the highlights:

• Fall release (R7) plus a look ahead at R8 and beyond
• Azure & Microsoft Dynamics CRM Better Together
• Web Services & Code Generation Deep Dive
• Advanced SharePoint Integration
• Agile Project Management with SureStep
• Software Development Lifecycle with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Silverlight & Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Tips & Tricks
• JavaScript Best Practices
• Outlook Client: Deployment, Performance & Security
• Patterns & Practices

There is not a better opportunity to go eXtreme in building your technical capacity! Don’t miss this once a year chance to build your skills.

For more information: http://extremecrm.com/eXtremeCRM2012BerlinH.aspx

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Pre-built Integration using Concur Connect Platform Delivers Single Entry, Compliant Expense Reporting

PLEASANTON, Calif.  — Veeva Systems introduces a new integration between Concur’s expense reporting system and Veeva CRM. Now, pharmaceutical sales representatives can simplify and streamline expense reporting using Veeva CRM as the single point of entry for call related expenses — a significant advantage considering the fact that most reps spend more than 70% of their time traveling for meetings with doctors across ever-growing territories. With such extensive travel and entertainment in a highly regulated industry, managing expenses and allocating each expense line item accurately is not only a huge administrative burden, but also a regulatory risk.

Concur’s cloud-based travel and expense management solution — used extensively within the pharmaceutical industry — enables reps to create, review and approve expense reports, as well as book and change travel itineraries. However, up until now, users had to do "double entry" — once in their CRM system and then again in their expense reporting system. With the new integration between Veeva CRM and Concur, users instead simply complete their call activity in Veeva CRM, and transactions flow seamlessly into Concur. Veeva’s latest product release also accurately aligns incurred expenses with the appropriate customer, simplifying compliance with Sunshine Act requirements.

"With the Concur Connect Platform, it’s quick and easy for application providers like Veeva to integrate their systems directly into Concur, yielding advantages for both the customer and the individual user," added Barry Padgett, EVP, Concur Connect Platform services at Concur. "Reps love the fact that they no longer have to do double entry and managers appreciate the efficiency. It’s a perfect example of the power of cloud computing and a smart marriage of two well-developed applications."

Brian Longo, senior director, Product Management, concluded "we are always looking for innovative ways to simplify our end user’s experience and reduce administrative tasks. The integration of Concur’s popular expense reporting application is a great way to leverage the strengths of both systems to enhance sales force effectiveness and operational efficiency."

About Concur

Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions. Concur’s easy-to-use Web-based and mobile solutions help companies and their employees control costs and save time. Concur’s systems adapt to individual employee preferences and scale to meet the needs of companies from small to large.

About Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems is the leader in cloud-based business solutions for the global life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence and customer success, Veeva has over 100 customers, ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. Founded in 2007, Veeva is a privately held company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Philadelphia, Barcelona, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. For more information, visit www.veevasystems.com .

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

LiveSalesforceTraining.com to provide unemployed with needed skills to fill the technology gap in corporate America

SCRANTON, Pa. — Live Salesforce Training (http://livesalesforcetraining.com) the global consulting firm focused on results based solutions for the Social Enterprise announced that it is offering free Salesforce.com training for a variety of roles. The aim of the initiative is to deliver needed training that provides unemployed technology professionals with relevant skills that businesses demand.

"Employers are unable to fill jobs with the current talent pool. Technology changes rapidly, and IT professionals often lack the skills needed by companies. This skill gap is based on a lack of alignment between the candidates companies seek and skill sets IT professionals possess. The result is underemployed and unemployed individuals", according to Ivan Feher, principal at Live Salesforce Training. Network engineers with experience in hot technologies like Cloud Computing, and database developers are among the technology positions in top demand, according to a national Robert Half survey and projections for the fourth quarter of 2011.

"Job creation is a principal concern for government. However, there has not been a focused effort and investment in creating the skills needed to fill these jobs. There is a need to deliver tailored agile technology solutions to customers going beyond a mere general application of technologies. Successful candidates need to complement technical skills, with strong business skills, industry skills, and collaboration skills. Knowledge of how to apply these skills to building organizational brands is also critical," continues Feher.

LiveSalesforceTraining.com is spearheading a training program to unemployed individuals with Cloud Computing and software as a service (SaaS) courses for different roles that can include, Social Media, Marketing, Lead Generation, Customer Service Rep (CSR), Analytics, Forecasting, Portals, Dashboards and others. For details visit: http://www.livesalesforcetraining.com/list-of-classes

Those interested in Salesforce.com training should submit their entry at http://www.livesalesforcetraining.com/unemployed and tell us your story in terms of the challenges you face being unemployed and how this training can help you. You are encouraged to include a brief video that is under 2 minutes.

About Live Salesforce Training

Live Salesforce Training helps organizations of all sizes quickly adapt to changes in their business environment for a competitive advantage. We accomplish this by aligning innovative technologies with business best practices to facilitate success. From Cloud deployments to sustainability programs, we have worked with Salesforce.com since 1999. Live Salesforce Training is a service of Customer For Life with headquarters in Scranton, Pennsylvania and customers worldwide.

Even second-, third-, and fourth-generation investments in CRM yields significant returns

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications continue to deliver high return on investment (ROI), with an average benefit of $5.60 returned for every dollar spent, according to a Nucleus Research analysis.

Where other software areas show smaller incremental returns after reaping the greatest benefits in initial deployments, CRM was found to deliver significant ROI throughout its lifecycle, often enhanced by further investment. Organizations effectively deploying secondary applications, such mobile, social, marketing optimization and sales analytics can see triple-digit ROI while greatly increasing employee productivity. By deploying applications that run on top of existing CRM, companies have also seen an improvement in business forecasting and an increase in sales.

"With a return of $5.60 for every dollar spent, investing in CRM is a no-brainer. Further, that investment has significant staying power. As vendors add social, marketing, analytics, and mobile access capabilities to their offerings, organizations have an opportunity to gain even more returns from CRM," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, Nucleus Research.

With reductions in the cost of deployment via the cloud, a focus on end user productivity, and a push towards social and mobile applications, there have been fundamental shifts in the goals of the CRM market that contribute to maintaining a high ROI. This has driven vendors to produce more rapid deployments that are developed through continued innovation in this space.

The full research note is available at NucleusResearch.com.

About Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research is a global provider of investigative, case-based technology research and advisory services that provide real-world insight into maximizing technology value. For more information, visit NucleusResearch.com.

X2Engine today announced the availability of X2Contacts beta, a new open source, Social Sales Management Application. Founded in early 2011 by veteran CRM software entrepreneur John Roberts, the company has been in stealth mode designing and developing X2Contacts, a next generation open source, social sales application for small and medium sized businesses.

“In today’s global economy, all companies need sales management applications in order to be competitive. The problem has been these apps have become so huge and complex, it’s impossible to implement the simple and straight-forward sales processes that actually make reps more knowledgeable and effective,” said John Roberts, Founder and CEO of X2Engine. “X2Contacts was designed to streamline contact and sales actions into one compact, blog-style user interface. We added contact and colleague social feeds into the equation, and the result is sales representatives become smarter and more effective resulting in increased sales and higher customer satisfaction.”

What makes X2Contacts unique in the crowded Customer Relationship Management (CRM) field is its compact, blog-style user interface. Interactive and collaborative tools which users are already familiar with from social networking sites such as; tagging pictures, shared docs, newsfeeds, group chat, discussions boards and rich mobile and iPad apps, are combined within a compact, lightning fast, contact sales management application. Reps are able to make more sales contacts while leveraging the combined social intelligence of peers, enabling them to add more value to their customer interactions leading to higher close rates.

San Jose BMW Motorcycles Customer Profile

San Jose BMW sells and services BMW motorcycles for the San Francisco Bay Area and has been using a pre-release version of X2Contacts for the past six months. “As an early customer design partner, I have been very impressed with the compactness of X2Contacts coupled with it’s results-oriented sales management foundation,” said Chris Hodgson, owner of San Jose BMW Motorcycles. “Now capturing leads from our website visitors and having our sales folks respond in minutes has increased our dealership lead management effectiveness. The integrated social media tools provide my sales team with real time knowledge of customers’ interests resulting in more effective sales interactions. Simply put, we are interacting with our customers faster and with more actionable knowledge.“

For a live demonstration, a detailed feature list and screen shot library please visit http://www.x2contacts.com. X2Contacts takes advantage of the latest open source software including Apache, PHP, MySQL and Linux (LAMP). X2Studio, an administrative tool, allows developers to create and share new application modules without any programming knowledge. Additionally X2Contacts supports HTML5, iPad, iPhone and Android mobile phones. X2Contacts is fully internationalized and has been localized into six languages with more on the way. X2Contacts can be downloaded from GitHub, Code.Google.com and SourceForge.net, and is licensed under the GPLv3. X2Engine plans to roll out commercial support and private virtual server hosting packages in October with additional details to be provided in the near future.

New World Wide Partner Program

Additionally, the company announced today the introduction of its Worldwide Partner Program, designed to support X2Engine partners across the globe. The program includes specialized developer, administration, hosting and sales management resources and training. Working with global partners is a key part of the companies’ go-to-market strategy.

“With this first beta of X2Contacts, we are introducing our World Wide Channel Partner Program for IT consulting, hosting and solution providers,” said John Roberts, Founder & CEO of X2Engine. “Now companies across the globe can work with partners offering X2Contacts hosting, administration, support and consulting services.”

About X2Engine

X2Engine Inc. of Scotts Valley, with offices in downtown Santa Cruz, California was founded in 2011 by John Roberts, a veteran Customer Relationship Management and Open Source software entrepreneur. The company provides software and hosting for X2Contacts, an open source sales management application developed by X2Engine Inc.

For more information, visit http://www.x2engine.com or email matthew(at)x2engine(dot)com

I am starting to see a trend for companies using Radian6 and other social enterprise monitoring products.

Companies are responding to people’s complaints or queries directly through social media. Wake up everyone, it’s not the just the 1-800 Call Center anymore.

With social enterprise monitoring products, companies look for keywords such as their own company, other band names (i.e. competition), and mis-spelled names. By scraping the web, they find as many social media sites as possible to find negative and positive feedback.

The monitoring software allows them to drill down and find out exactly what people are saying or thinking about the company, good or bad.

By responding in real time, this helps improves the public perception of the company.

Success is making customers happy, one customer at a time. Hopefully, that customer will share their experience via Facebook and Twitter.  And that’s the power of spreading the message, virally.

The Facebook Fan Page

Another trend emerging with companies using social media monitoring tools are treating their Facebook Fan Page as serious as their own corporate web site.

Social media *is* an integrated marketing plan for any business.

By having a contest and engaging Facebook readers to “post on your wall” whether it’s a testimonial or uploading a video, that’s the community companies want to see.  And with 700 million users on Facebook, that’s a large sample pool to choose from.

But it doesn’t end there.  Eventually you’ll want to draw your readers to your web site and make those conversions.  Loyal  and repeat customers are the best customers.  I think everyone knows that.

Again, it doesn’t end there.  By using Heroku for Facebook, you can build real anything as a Facebook app, including a storefront from your goods, without even leaving the Facebook page.  Now you have two store fronts, one web and one Facebook.

What used to be a brick and mortar industry with real storefronts, sales clerks and cashiers changed with web ecommerce over a decade ago.  Now that revolution is changing.

However, will customer service agents and help desk call centers be a thing of the past?

SohoOS, a simple way to manage your micro-business for free.

If you ever have run a small business, or even worked as a freelance / micro business, you know that at any given time you are doing 100 things at once. As a result, when at the computer, you might have 10 + applications open at any one time.  Often, many of these are not integrated. In fact, many may not even be properly adapted to for maximum benefit, as all of this costs either time or money.

Now imagine a site that holds all your small business management applications. You’d be happy, right?!   The price? It’s basically free.  As a bonus, it even lets you network with ‘00s of other Small to Medium-sized business (SMB) manager. Who needs lunch with that?

May I introduce the SohoOS management services environment where small and micro-business can prosper through use of integrated and simplified management functions.

2 weeks ago, SohoOS announced a new partner, Plimus ~ an e-Commerce platform and Buy Anyware API, to support SohoOS.

Plimus, the leader in hosted e-Business solutions, today announced that SohoOS standardized on Plimus as the e-Commerce platform for SohoOS’ cloud-based business management services. Plimus provides seamless integration into the SohoOS platform and handles all payment processing, billing and purchase support services. Subscriptions can be upgraded easily and administered by SohoOS as business users add additional low-cost, value-added services to its free, cloud-based core product eco-system. The Plimus Buy Anyware API also is employed to recognize returning business users and provides personalized purchasing features that enhance the customer experience.

SohoOS provides everything a micro-business or freelancer needs to run a successful business, all available with a single click and in one location. The service is free, with charges incurred only when using SohoOS’ extended low-cost services such as communication suite, marketing suite and more. SohoOS gives the small and micro-business community the ability to integrate as many applications and services as needed with a unified contact system, payment processing platform, social community, marketing tools and customized reports.

"Plimus was great to work with as a partner," said Ron Daniel, CEO of SohoOS. "They took the time to listen to our business needs and spent the time working with us to ensure we launched successfully. The Buy Anyware API was extremely easy to work with, response time is good and the solution for recurring charges it offered was exactly what we needed. We look forward to growing our business with Plimus as our partner"

Said Plimus Vice President of Marketing Charles Born: "There is no doubt SohoOS represents a most promising step forward in the development of cloud-based business management software. Their goal to facilitate a global shift in the business community – where chances of success for small and micro-businesses are equal to larger enterprise companies – is very synergistic to our business objectives for facilitating e-Commerce in the small- and medium-sized business market. We are proud to be able to offer billing for Cloud/SaaS services to SohoOS and other exciting companies operating in the cloud, as they increasingly turn to Plimus for mission-critical, flexible solutions."

About SohoOS

Freelancers and micro business owners live in a corporate dominated world and are faced with an impossible task. To compete on a day-to-day basis with big enterprises equipped with the most expensive management solutions and web based services. SohoOS’s mission is to revolutionize the way small and micro businesses interact and offer them a platform that will help them run smoothly without interference, all the while giving them a corporate edge in a nurturing environment, bundled in a simple to use, friendly and free solution. Our goal is to facilitate a global shift in the business community, where chances of success are equal to all. SohoOS is an Israel-based company with a New York City presence.

Cloud-based Service Overview SohoOS

AppExchange Solution Enhances Sales Agility for Companies with Complex Products or Licensing Models

LONDON — Bluewolf ( www.bluewolf.com ), the global agile business consulting firm, announced today the availability of the Bluewolf Beyond Product Picker, a new cloud solution available on the Salesforce.com AppExchange marketplace that dramatically simplifies the sales process for companies offering complex products and/or licensing models.

"Today’s technology needs have become so complex, it has become a huge challenge for big media, high-tech and other organizations with elaborate product lines and licensing models to drive sales efficiently and accurately," said Bluewolf CTO Lou Fox. "Our new Product Picker expands the power of Salesforce CRM by helping users bypass a lot of the complexity and tedium in closing a sale, so they can get back to the business of creating new opportunities."

Bluewolf Beyond’s Product Picker makes it possible to add multiple products to a sales opportunity quickly and easily, streamlining complex pricing and product configuration inside Salesforce CRM. Built using Visualforce, Product Picker can be tailored to companies’ unique product catalog, offering sales teams the ability to accurately control product pricing and tracking.

Bluewolf Beyond’s Product Picker enables sales teams to:

Easily manage and edit multiple products within a quote from a single screen

Reduce data entry and boost accuracy through the use of robust filters and auto-complete features

Bluewolf Beyond for CloudApps is a managed service designed to help companies innovate and drive even higher ROI from Salesforce post go-live. The Product Picker is offered as a custom solution overlay that the Bluewolf Beyond team builds to the specifications of each organization’s needs.

Contact Bluewolf today at (866) 455-WOLF or visit http://www.bluewolf.com/productpicker to learn more about Bluewolf Beyond’s Product Picker.

About Bluewolf

Bluewolf is the agile business transformation company. We partner with clients to sync the business and IT to create a new level of business responsiveness. From customer lifecycle innovation, cloud implementations and IT staffing to agile managed services, Bluewolf helps clients attain efficient, adaptive business performance. With thousands of clients, only Bluewolf can bring 10 years of best practices and guarantee success. Bluewolf is headquartered in New York City, with offices across the US and Europe.

To view client success stories, visit bluewolf.com/tv. Join the conversation on Bluewolf Twitter and Bluewolf Facebook.

About Bluewolf Beyond

Bluewolf Beyond is a subscription program that’s designed to keep your databases and managed cloud applications running at peak performance to support your changing business needs. With Bluewolf Beyond, you can drive higher ROI, gain access to a full range of U.S.-based IT experts on demand, and free up resources for your core competencies–all at a low, predictable monthly cost.

In all the years I have covered Dreamforce, this was the first time a major announcement or acquisition was missing in one of the 2 keynotes.  In a way, you can call this “What have we been up to in the past 8 months with all of our acquisitions?”.

As this was the largest tech conference with over 45,000 registered attendees, it makes me wonder how Oracle Open World 2011 will outdo and outshine Salesforce?  The Moscone Center is only so big, and any bigger, you’ll have to call in the fire marshals.

VMware, ironically, had their user conference in Las Vegas at the same time, while pushing their private cloud vision, which eventually means buying more hardware and VMWare software.  The Salesforce public cloud vision model is about integrating public services, and we saw it at Dreamforce.

This year, the key message was the usual Social, Mobile and Open message, as opposed to the Social, Mobile and Cloud agenda.  No need to introduce the cloud… we’re already here.  But at Dreamforce 2011, Salesforce outlined the framework for their cloud, either by the new features (some from acquisitions), partner integration, or simply success stories from customers.

The success of Salesforce starts with Customer Service.  And from that, the moral of the story is listening to people is more important than ever.  This means a closer contact with your customers including building relationships.  Social is nothing new.  It was always there.  It’s the connectivity to public cloud networks that’s the game changer.

Let’s start by looking at some of the components to their strategy and their key message, “Welcome to the Social Enterprise”.  (aka Facebook for the Enterprise)

Salesforce isn’t just CRM anymore even though their stock ticker is CRM… it’s a suite of enterprise applications including Chatter and the Service cloud, as well as a platform-as-a-service with Force.com.

Their model is a networked ecosystem that connects your business with other businesses.  CRM is great, but now you can include the next generation of social information available on public social networks.  Thus, the secret they outlined is:

1. Step 1:  create a social customer profile, & keep track of your social database
2. Step 2:  build an employee social network
3. Step 3:  create a customer & product social network

Let’s look at some of the changes and features that will get you there.

Mobile

Tablets and smartphones are outselling PCs, so the shift to mobile computing has already happened.

If you’re familiar with Kindle Cloud Reader, LinkedIn, or apps like app.ft.com, then you’ve already experienced HTML5.

HTML5 is viewed by many analysts as the future of mobile development.  While most people may think the iPad and iPhone are the winners in mobile technology, I feel the market is still in its infancy and the choice of tablets and smartphones will change rapidly.  What you will be using next year has yet to be invented.

Salesforce.com made a bold prediction by placing HTML5 at the core of their mobile strategy with an upcoming product, touch.salesforce.com.  In short, it’s a fully functional cross platform HTML5 based mobile web application.  No longer are they tied to specific models with native apps.

Salesforce customers and partners can access all the data and customizations performed on your Salesforce.com traditional web page and it will come through your mobile device via HTML5.

touch.salesforce.com will be available early in 2012 but the price has not been determined.

Social

Let’s face it, “Social Networking” belongs in the Call Center, and Salesforce has a strong vision for the social enterprise.  People complain on social media sites before they even call customer service.  With the Service Cloud, Facebook and Twitter comments are populated to your customer database social profiles.

Salesforce.com joined forces (no pun intended) with Dun & Bradstreet on Data.com, which builds on the earlier acquisition of contact provider Jigsaw back in 2009.  It’s all part of the social profiling and the partnership will provide Data.com users with access to 200 million businesses.

Jigsaw uses a crowd-sourcing model to collect up-to-date information on user’s contacts, with other users of the service contributing data and helping keep records clean of errors. Jigsaw is not available in Europe.

As well, we finally got an in depth look on how Radian6 can help you evaluate and measure what’s being said about your company and products.  By monitoring and interacting on social media sites can improve public perceptions of a company. The Radian6 acquisition which was announced in late March 2011.

Open (and Platform)

Database.com, the social enterprise database which was announced at last year’s Dreamforce 2010, is now generally available.  A Data Residency Option (DRO) for Database.com was added, allowing companies to choose what data they want to have in the cloud and what information they want to keep in-house.  Basically, Database.com’s Data Residency Option lets companies choose to keep their data in their own data centers while still working with Salesforce apps.  A big plus if you ask me.

When Chatter was announced in 2009, the product was similar to having everyone in the same room all the time.  I wrote about it being a limited resource to internal only people and systems, but now with Chatter Connect API and Chatter Groups, it is now open to external customers and partners.  The success of Chatter depends on external collaboration, and that includes more than people.  It included data (files, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) talking back to you.  I am excited to see Chatter Approvals, for example, to have external systems like approving an Expense report without having to go to another application including Microsoft SharePoint.

By take advantage of a set of REST (REpresentational State Transfer) programming interfaces, it will now connect Chatter to other web services.  This opens the doors to ISVs and partners to build additional value-added services.

At the end, there will be more adoption for Chatter and Chatter Plus and therefore makes the app “stickier”.  Just like Facebook, and we all know how addictive that can be.

The social revolution requires a new platform, and the explosion of apps (Facebook apps, Android apps, Apple apps, and even Heroku apps) proves it.  The number of new apps developed every day is explosive.

The big news last month was Heroku now supports Java.  The Heroku platform currently has triple the number of customer applications built on it than it did a year ago and another programming language will be revealed shortly (other than Ruby on Rails and Java).  Also worth mentioning is Heroku for the social enterprise package with pricing packages starting from $4,000/month.

Partner success is an integral part of Salesforce’s success.  More announcements and success stories came from new ISVs to the AppExchange -  including Kenandy, Seesmic, Concur, Infor and Workday – to build new social and mobile employee applications in the cloud with Force.com.  I guess there is only so much stage time that you can promote, but I expected someone from Workday, which provides software-as-a-service solutions for financial and human capital management, to be up on stage with Marc.

And finally, Siteforce, a website development tool which also announced at Dreamforce ‘10 last year, will finally go on general availability in  October.  If you are looking at ease of use for developing websites, Siteforce is definitely for you.

Dreamforce 2012 will be held September 18-21, 2012.