Archives For IBM SmartCloud

The Facts About Salesforce.com (part 3)

Jan Sysmans —  October 13, 2011 — 1 Comment

For those of you who follow the CRM space, last week provided for some real drama. Here’s a quick recap courtesy of TechCrunch

Oct 4: Larry Ellison Cancels Marc Benioff’s Keynote at Oracle’s OpenWorld
Oct 5: After A Cancelled Keynote, Benioff Strikes Back; Talks Future Of The Cloud
Oct 6: Ellison Reveals Oracle’s Public Cloud; Calls Salesforce The ‘Roach Motel’ Of Cloud Services

I don’t want to dwell on this cloud spat, but the one thing I do want to talk about is one of the points that Larry Ellison raises.  He warned customers: “Beware of false clouds“, and further goes on to state that salesforce.com “is a proprietary cloud, the ultimate vendor lock-in”.  It really delights me to see that Larry Ellison is now saying what we’ve been saying all along.  Salesforce.com is not cloud computing.  Salesforce.com is a 10 year old multi-tenant hosting technology.

True cloud computing allows customers to freely move their data between different clouds;
True cloud computing gives customers the choice where they want to deploy their CRM instance;
True cloud computing is open;
SugarCRM is the only CRM solution in the market today that is truly build for the cloud.

On Oct 12, we announced added support for IBM SmartCloud Enterprise to the set of public clouds that customers can deploy Sugar on.  In addition to the IBM SmartCloud, Sugar runs on Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud and Windows Azure.  Customers can also choose to deploy Sugar in the Sugar Cloud, in one of our partner clouds or in their own private cloud.  To learn more about the benefits of REAL cloud computing, take a look at the following:

Deploying SugarCRM on Public Clouds http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=deployingsugaronpublicclouds-111013021614-phpapp01&stripped_title=deploying-sugarcrm-on-public-clouds&userName=jsysmans

View more presentations from Jan Sysmans
In Amazon EC2, Cloud Computing, CRM, CRM Success, IBM SmartCloud, Oracle, salesforce.com, SugarCRM , , , , , , ,
permalink

A View of the Customer in the Cloud

Jan Sysmans —  October 12, 2011 — Leave a comment

By Andy Monshaw, General Manager, IBM Midmarket

Customer is king. Seems like a simple premise, but for most businesses, managing customer relationships is a means to an end – a way to reduce costs while increasing profitability. Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, allows businesses to solidify customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. Today’s challenge is how fast the right information can be put into the hands of those who need to know and know right now.

Today, cloud computing is creating new business opportunities in the world of CRM.  In fact, AMI Partners forecasts that in the U.S. alone, the SMB Cloud CRM market is set to triple by 2015.  Additionally, the global CRM applications market is expected to continue on this trajectory in 2011 with revenue approaching $18 billion on 7.6 percent year-over-year growth.

Through IBM SmartCloud, SugarCRM is making CRM on the cloud a reality for businesses of all sizes so clients can readily take advantage of these advanced capabilities in a matter of minutes and bring new efficiencies into their businesses.

True CRM brings together information from numerous data sources to give one, holistic view of customers. Also, methods for reaching customers are changing as social media channels are becoming more widely used by consumers. With the emergence of social business, consumers are empowered in more ways than ever before to access information that helps them make informed decisions on the products and services they choose to buy. As a result, organizations are rethinking the way they approach CRM and looking to the cloud to gain faster access to sales reports and data, as well as analytical tools to evaluate sales performance that would help deliver better consumer insight.

For any business looking to improve its customer relationship management, implementing a CRM system through the cloud is both efficient and cost effective. A CRM running in the cloud helps a company track data, such as orders, discounts, references, competitors and much more, without having to worry about any potential limitations of the underlying technology. The sky’s the limit!

Today’s small and medium-sized businesses are looking to the cloud to find answers about their customers. CRM running in the cloud makes it that much easier because at the end of the day, clients want innovative yet affordable technologies to make their business hum.

In CRM Success, IBM SmartCloud, Uncategorized
permalink