Sharing files, paying bills, connecting with others – you do all of this online in your personal life without having to think twice. But at work? That’s a whole other story.

It’s time to decide if you want to continue doing things the old way, or join us in the cloud. What will you choose?

http://www.ichoosethecloud.com/

1.  Reduction in System Maintenance

Moving an organization’s applications to the cloud will eliminate the need for update functions to run on individual computers.  When it’s time for a security update, a bug fix, or the introduction of new functionality an application is updated in the cloud without any intervention from the user.   In the case of security updates and certain bug fixes, users do not even need to be aware that an update has taken place.

2.  Increased Accessibility

Applications and files that exist in the cloud can be accessed from any place that has an internet connection.  This allows for increased productivity and greater flexibility for mobile and offsite employees.

3.  Ease of Scalability

As a business grows and the need for additional server space grows, Salesforce can easily grant that business the additional resources faster and cheaper than purchasing and installing a conventional hard drive.

4.  Current Computing Trends

The availability of computers designed for a specific purpose, like netbooks, require much less processing power than desktops and laptops.   This trend lends itself to the cloud computing model where most of processing is done on the server and not the computer.

5.   Cost Reductions

The items listed above are only a few of the many Force.com cost benefits that will lower an organization’s daily operating costs.  As long as moving applications to the Force.com cloud saves money while continuing to provide an organization’s IT needs, the trend towards cloud computing will continue to grow.

Author: William Egan

As apps migrate to the Net, the software giant’s old model looks older every day.

By Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO salesforce.com

I have been waiting for something spectacular to happen any day. And it’s not the explosion of another volcano in Iceland, but it will be a global event with far reaching ramifications that will be as well known. Apple’s market capitalization is about to be worth more than Microsoft’s. That is quite a change from a decade ago.

This became clear to me after I recently invited Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley’s renowned prophet (note that’s prophet with a “ph” and not an “f”), to speak to my management team about her most recent manifesto, “The Mobile Internet Report.” Mary did a brilliant job reviewing the most important developments in the technology market place from 400 million users on Facebook to 75 million iPhones to 4 billion apps downloaded on the Appstore. What struck me as more significant than what was included was what was conspicuously absent. When she opened the discussion for questions I made one observation: “Mary in your entire hour-long presentation on the future you didn’t mention Microsoft even once.” (You can see this same presentation on YouTube from the Google Atmosphere conference.) I had spent my career with Microsoft (MSFT) as the ever looming Goliath: from my days at Oracle (ORCL) wondering how Bill Gates and Co. would steal away our database business to starting salesforce.com (CRM) and waiting (and waiting) for Microsoft to turn to the cloud and offer a product that our customers would want (Neither happened).

After Mary’s presentation I joked with my team about one of Microsoft’s new commercials. “I’m a PC, and Windows 7 is my idea,” says the woman in French sitting in Paris outside of a busy cafe. “My PC used to crash all the time, and I told Microsoft I wanted it to stop.” I don’t

really get the campaign, but what I find most baffling is that she didn’t ask for any other innovation. How is that possible? How can’t someone want more? How can Microsoft think this is what customers demand most?

Marc Benioff, CEO salesforce.com

Today’s customers do want far more. In contrast to the innovation stagnation at Microsoft, Apple is delivering in a profound way. And, having taken a music player and transforming it to change the way we all use the Net, Apple (AAPL) dominates the current mobile paradigm. Facebook, as the single most popular app on the net today, is also training the future users of computing. In many ways it is becoming the new connector of everything on the Internet with universal like. And as it nears half a billion users and is growing faster than ever before, it’s only a matter of time before a billion people use this new way to communicate. Everything about Facebook, the app, the entire ecosystem around it, and all of the user’s data and metadata is in the cloud. It’s a 100% pure Internet app. Most importantly, none of it is written with any Microsoft software. (That’s universal unlike.)

Facebook’s success, as well as the rise of other new technologies like YouTube, devices like the iPhone and the iPad and models like Cloud Computing are evidence of a huge shift happening in computing — and it’s bigger than anything we have seen before. And although Microsoft is a casualty, it certainly is not the cause. This is the fundamental nature of our industry in which every 10 years or so a radical new paradigm of computing emerges. From mainframes (70s) to minicomputers (80s) to PCs and LANs (90s) to Cloud 1-the desktop Internet (2000s) to Cloud 2-the mobile Internet (2010+), we can safely say that the only constant in the last 50 years of computing is change. And no company or individual can escape the velocity of change of our industry.

As we try to keep pace with these changes to a new computing industry, we are left with only two choices: innovate or die. Microsoft like DEC before it, and IBM (IBM) before it, tried too long to hold on to its Windows model believing it was permanent in an industry of impermanence. But it didn’t work out that way. Google outsmarted Microsoft into the Internet, and it dominated the next Internet paradigm. Now Apple is the clear winner in the new mobile paradigm.

We are fully entrenched in the world of Cloud 2. Smart phones that run apps have replaced PCs. We are mobile. We touch, not click. We are social, not siloed. Our location is known, not anonymous. We know more about what our friends are doing than our own employees, and sometimes our own families. Facebook, Apple, and a new generation of technologies are defining our daily experiences. The old model looks older every day as it tries to hold on in a last gasp of updates based on stability instead of innovation.

The way we run our lives has forever changed. The employees we are hiring right out of school are appalled by the technology we use to run our companies. They are more productive at home than they are in the office. They call for a change that is difficult to hear in companies that rank seniority over insight. The new paradigm is amplified as entire industries like communications, music, and education are transformed forever.

As a CEO I am restless as I think how I will transform our company, customer base, and ecosystem to the modern era. It’s not easy. Will some remain in Cloud 1 peering backward gleefully while our last generation competitors stagnate in the PC paradigm? Or, can we do better? Can we step forward with new technology and new products — and advance the new paradigm? This is the reason that I am putting our best teams on our best chance — a new service called Chatter, which offers a brand new way to collaborate with people at work. You have to make big bets in business to get big returns. Steve Jobs has once again reminded us of that lesson and has shared with us the rewards.

SOURCE:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/29/the-end-of-microsoft-a-door-opens-to-a-new-cloud/

Chromium Blog

Essentially, Google plans to bring us the option to print to any printer in the world, from anywhere, from their Chrome OS (and any  web-enabled devices).

Google has announced a new project called Google Cloud Print which is setting out to “build a printing experience that enables any app (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer anywhere in the world.” In short, your computer or device will tell Cloud Print what it wants printed, and Cloud Print will then send the appropriate instructions to your printer. No printer drivers necessary.

Google is providing some initial documentation on the project here. The site says that any application, be it native or web based, will be able to use Cloud Print through APIs (which will allow you to submit print jobs and also check job status). There’s going to be a standard ‘web UI’ print dialog for interacting with the service from an application.

Of course, there’s still one big problem: getting Google Cloud Print to actually talk to your printer. Google has two solutions to this. In the long term, it is proposing that the industry adopt new open standards around cloud printing, and that manufacturers build new printer models to be ‘cloud aware’. In other words, the printer is connected to the web and includes software that knows how to communicate with Google’s servers.

The second solution is for ‘legacy printers’ (which include all printers at this point—even printers with an ethernet or Wifi connection). For these, Google plans to offer software that you install on the PC that the printer is connected to. Google is currently building this proxy software for Windows and intends to support Mac and Linux down the line. You won’t actually install the software on your own, either — it will come with Google Chrome (though it will be off by default). Google also hopes that some router manufacturers will start including the proxy software in their devices, so that users don’t have to leave their computers on.

A few key things to note: Google is going to offer its own Cloud Print service, but it wants the standard to be open and expects other alternative services to spring up as well. And this isn’t just for computers — it could potentially be used for phones, tablets, and any other web-enabled device. Wouldn’t that be nice.

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SOURCE: TechCrunch

Click this image!

Since Spring ‘10, Salesforce CRM has a *NEW* Meeting Request Feature, which is a much better solution and a step in the direction of an even better solution (coming soon).

The setup requires 3 simple steps outlined in the image to the right.

• Simple Administration vs. Annual CRM Plan Execution
• Full-Time vs. Part-Time Administrator
• Certified Administrator vs. Advanced Certified Administrator
• Remote Admin vs. On-site Admin
• Existing Employee vs. New Hire vs. Contract

In general, you face 5 options:

#1. Existing Employee (Low cost, Low value)

• Annual Cost: $13,000 to $27,000 (33% of $40k – $80k/salary)
• Pros: No new perceived cost. CFO is happy.
• Cons:Existing employee will likely lack the appropriate exerience, not be Certified, and both a) acquiring this new skill and b) managing user & management adoption of this technology will require a lot of energy.

You could select a member of your sales ops team, or an office manager to figure it out.

When utilizing an existing team member, you may create the appearance of saving money while ultimately the savings is not a guarantee.  One immediate concern should be the fact that the new duties will reduce the employee’s time to focus on what was, presumably, already a full time position and you will now need to back fill the employee’s old duties.  In today’s market, many of the items that an employee handles on a daily basis are specialized or require some level of training to reach maximum proficiency. The training and possibly even the cost of a new hire that is required for a replacement for these duties should be considered in addition to the training or lost time costs for your employee to achieve a level of the simplest proficiency on the platform. Another concern to keep in mind is the potential cost of retraining a replacement and bringing them up to speed in cases of turnover or attrition of the employee you have selected to administrate your organization. The costs to consider in this case should include any lost project time, support outage, and the period of time in which it takes your new employee to ‘get up to speed’ and be fully functional in this role.

Additional costs may be incurred when your internal employee reaches the limits of their expertise or runs into an issue that their limited exposure and experience does not give them the capability to resolve. Depending on the savvy of your chosen employee and their drive to learn the platform, they will likely not have the necessary knowledge to perform even the simplest integrations or to help optimize the organization to get the most use out of the platform for your users. They will have limited, if any, access to extensions of the platform without hiring outside assistance.

#2. New Full-Time Employee (Highest Cost, Medium Value)

• Annual Cost: $80,000 to $100,000 Salary
• Pros: You’ll receive a single dedicated resource capable of administrating up to roughly 100 users.
• Cons: Highest cost option.  Skill focus will only be on Administration, likely not also Developer and Consultant Certified.

You could hire a Certified Salesforce Administrator.

This is obviously the best choice, right? Having a resource at your fingertips all day, every day is the answer to your prayers!  You can ask questions whenever you want and it’s almost like having a personal assistant that specializes in using the platform…

While this may be your initial reaction it is not always the right choice for your company. While this may be appropriate for very large organizations with 100+ users, you will typically find that this individual will, at times, need the company to utilize at least one other solution described in this article. Many organizations that do not have a sufficient number of users will find that they are under utilizing their Salesforce Administrator and will attempt to find additional uses for the administrator that may not hold the same value for the company. Some organizations find that a Certified Salesforce Administrator is not sufficient to meet their needs and they will instead, or in addition to, hire a Certified Salesforce Developer. This, of course, comes with a higher incurred cost.

Ultimately, hiring a full-time employee may be the right choice for your company, if you can find the right person to fit your needs for an affordable rate.  You will want to hire someone who has a good personal skill set and good resources to address any issues that may be outside of his/her skill set.  Even if they can work slightly beyond their existing skill set, be prepared to pay a little bit extra for outside assistance when you push the limits of their skills a bit too far. In most cases, you will still need to hire help for any level of integration or custom development.

#3. Part-Time Contractor (Wide Range, Hit or Miss)

• Annual Cost: $12,000 to $200,000 (Cost Varies)
• Pros: Flexible to hire and fire as needed.
• Cons: Requires your constant time managing this resource on a per project basis.

Hire a contractor to help out and provide service when you need it.

While this approach can result in a big win, it also has the most risk involved. Bringing in an independent requires as much work as finding a new person to hire, including checking references, reviewing work history, addressing performance concerns, and even establishing the realistic level of their qualifications. Given their part-time status, you inherit an ongoing risk of attrition or turnover and even need to be away of their overall workload to ensure that you will be able to receive prompt service when you find your self in need. Bringing in a new contractor when you have lost access to one for either of these reasons carries with it a time period of going back through the ‘hiring’ process, re-familiarization of the new resource, and could create the problem of the two contractors having differing levels of capability.

The reason this can be a big win is actually the same reason it carries the highest risk. Hiring an independent contractor is a gamble, even when you do all of your homework on the person being hired. There is no uniformity in the quality of services or skill levels that you can expect to receive.

#4. Salesforce Premier Support w/ Admin (Medium Cost, Medium Value)

• Annual Cost: 25% of your license cost
• Pros: Pretty good phone support.
• Cons: You won’t have a resource who gets to know your business over time, and the details of your specific Salesforce CRM system.

Salesforce Support staff will work with you remotely.

While I am a big advocate of Premier Support with or without the Admin service, I feel it is very important for companies to understand the capabilities and limitations of Premier Support with Admin.  I will be writing a blog entry in the near future that explains the best ways to utilize Premier Support and the level of support that you should expect so, for the sake of keeping this post on track, I will focus strictly on the capabilities of the Admin portion of the service entitlement.

It is important to keep in mind that the Admin service provided as a portion of Premier Support does not provide you with a designated resource that will work with you each time or even provide you with a designated contact to call for assistance unless you are a larger company. The admin will take your requests and complete them, at times requiring you to complete a few required documents or perform portions of your request that fall outside of the support boundaries.  When working with the Admin, you should expect to fill the role of project manager and will rarely receive any type of consultative input from the admin resource. To put it frankly, the Administrator is an order taker with limited resources. As long as the services you are requesting fall within the support boundaries, they will perform the request as closely to your specification as possible, while rarely proposing alternatives unless your request is impossible to complete or is contradictory to published best practices.

While I recommend that you obtain this support from Salesforce regardless off your company size, this is not a replacement for a true System Administrator and should be considered to be more of a resource to assist with simple day to day tasks and changes. This is also a resource that you can provide to any third party you may hire in order to reduce the amount of time that is utilized on the smaller, less technical portions of a project. You will never get any level of integration or custom development through use of Premier Support with Admin.

#5. Contract a Certified Project Team (Medium Cost, Highest Value)

• Annual Cost: (Flexible – depends on length of engagement, expertise required, etc…)
• Pros: Get a full team for less than a full-time employee!  It can be hard to keep an Admin busy full time (160 hours a month).  For less than the cost of a full-time admin, you can employ a full team of resources including an Advanced Certified Admin, Certified Developer, Certified Consultant, Technical Architect, Project Manager, Database Engineer, etc…
• Cons: Results require you to be good at directing and delegating to this team.

Contract  a company like ForceBrain.com per engagement or sign up for a Certified Team Plan for a monthly amount of hours with designated resources.

While I am unable to quote the costs or experience levels of other Salesforce consulting partners, I can utilize the rates which we (ForceBrain.com) charge and the experience of our team to provide you a cost benefit comparison and give you some insight into a new service offering that ForceBrain.com is making available.

When working with a Certified Consulting Partner such as ForceBrain.com, you should expect them to be capable of providing assistance with all aspects of your Salesforce goals. ForceBrain.com actually maintains a 100% guarantee for your satisfaction and, as such, in combination with the highly qualified and experienced team members, I am able to present the use of a Consulting Partner as the highest value to the customer within this article.

The most common approach to hiring a consulting partner is to create a fixed set of goals and request a quote or estimate from the consultant for the completion of the list. This is the standard for all kinds of contractor work, whether we are discussing plumbers, carpenters, or even salesforce.com developers. We perform many projects under this model but, in order to complete the work quickly and efficiently, your costs tend to be higher due to the impact of current workload and deadlines against the ability to start additional work during the time period and the necessity to maintain a team on an individual contract during the project.

With the growing popularity of Agile and Scrum Development, we have seen an increase in the number of long term engagements that do not start off with clear cut goals and deadlines, which led to our newly available ‘Team Plan’. While we had some ‘Remote Administrator’ long term agreements available previously, we found that the inclusion of development resources was necessary to ensure full utilization by our customers and meet the needs of these long term projects. This allows us to offer a couple of additional incentives to our customers; 1) We are able to help develop a forward thinking plan of ongoing development to help ensure customer success. 2) Spreading the work out in a predetermined number of hours each month allows us to plan utilization of resources and we are able to pass the savings on to our customers in amounts up to 50% off of our standard hourly rate.

Summary

There are many different approaches that a company can take to administrate their Salesforce CRM environment but, there is never a single correct answer to every question. Many organizations will want to utilize more than one of the options mentioned above, while others may even proceed without any administration capabilities. The best recommendation that I can make to any company is to be educated and knowledgeable about your options and the results that should be expected based on your selection.

Click each graphic below to view the video.

You may also download the Official Spring ‘10 Release Notes here.

All previous Salesforce Release Notes are listed here.

You might also check out Coming in Spring ‘10 – Ideas submitted by customers which will shape the Spring ‘10 release.

**We’ve received notice that our Spring ‘10 org will be upgraded on Feb. 5th.  UPDATE: Friday, February 12, 2010 at 8:00pm PST to Saturday, February 13, 2010 at 1:30am PST

Enjoy!

Well, ForceBrain.com has been down this path several times with a number of Force.com applications, including SupplierSoft, Mintfly.com, Cloud2Mail, AdWorks, TalentWorks, etc…

We’ve learned that there are essentially 8 critical steps necessary to successfully get from bar napkin to the AppExchange.

STEP 1: Concept

Whether you have a simple list of high-level requirements, or a 25 page design blueprint, it all starts with your vision.  While we prefer more of an Agile approach of less documentation and more immediate prototypting, it is essential to at least document your project goals in the following areas:

• Specification Requirements
  • Architectural Preferences or Limitations
  • Functional Requirements (Must Have vs. Nice-to-Have)
  • User Interface Demands
• Budget Confinements
  • Total Project Cash Outlay
  • Monthly Cash Flow Limitations
• Timeline Requirements
  • Prototype Deadline
  • Beta Deadline
  • AppExchange Deadline
    

STEP 2: Proof-of-Concept

Early tests are critical to lowering risk, confirming approach, and validating customer value. Fortunately for you, the Force.com platform is a rapid development platform. As found in the IDC Force.com ROI Study, developing on the Force.com platform is 5x’s faster than .NET and Java.  This fact, combined with an Agile methodology approach makes for a quick means to complete your proof-of-concept process.

POC Success Factors – Typically there are a few drivers for a standard POC (proof-of-concept), and these need to be defined up front, so the resulting POC can be measured as successful or not.  Which of the following potential POC milestones must be completed?

• Blueprints Complete
• Integration Test Working
• User Interface Mock Ups Working
• Feature Set Implemented
• Pilot Application

STEP 3: Customer Validation

A step often overlooked, but one we highly recommend is getting customer validation or a focus group to validate your concept.

STEP 4: v1.0 Full Development

Now you’re ready to move into full development.  You’ve proven your concept with some serious skeptics, and refined your core requirements for v1.0.

• Assemble the team, potentially including:
  • Project Manager (10%)
  • Technical Architect (10%)
  • Force.com Developer (50%)
  • Configuration Specialist (10%)
  • User Interface Designer (20%)
• Take the Agile / Scrum Approach (video)!
• Define your must have vs. nice-to-have wish lists.
• Create your monthly release schedules for the development team with monthly deliverables.
• Develop, test, iterate!
  

STEP 5: v.9 Customer Pilot

Now you’ve completed what we call v.9 and are ready to conduct User Acceptance Testing with a Customer Pilot.  You’re typically looking less for value validation, as this was achieved earlier on, and more for bugs, areas for improvement, etc…

• Create Test Scripts for every section of the application, including a template to capture bugs, feature requests, etc…
• Create a list of customers to test, and assign them unique testing roles.
• Conduct customer setup & training
• Commence customer pilot testing
• Review feedback
• Address fixes and move to v1.0

STEP 6: AppExchange Deployment

The AppExchange deployment process takes longer than a first-timer would expect.  The following steps are necessary to complete this process.

1. Backup / Clone Dev Org - Especially if you are going to proceed with a Managed Package, we recommend that you create a clone of your Development Org, as there is no way to undo the creation of a managed package.
2. Beta Package (Unmanaged vs. Managed) – Read the Quick Reference for Developing Packages, and decide on if a private vs. managed package is best for your application.  If you’re not sure yet, we recommend completing the beta test with a private package.
3. Beta Test Install – Install the Managed Beta package and test that it has zero conflicts and all is in order.
4. Released Package – Create your final package.
   
5. Security Review ($5k vs. Free) - Read the AppExchange Publishing Guide for more details.
   
6. AppExchange Profile Creation – You will need to create your AppExchange Profile and upload your app here.
   
7. 30-Day Trial – If you would like your prospects to be able to receive a 30-day trial by completing a lead form you will need to file a ticket with Salesforce Support to create a DOT of your Master Org, which will be cloned for every 30-day trial.
8. Master Trial Org Request
9. Remove Sample Data Button - If you would like your DOT to include sample data, so your prospects have a set of data to play with during their trial, then you should develop a “Remove Sample Data” button and include it. This way, when your prospects convert their trial to a paid org, they have a means to remove the sample data.
10. Salesforce ISV Program – If you will be selling software licenses, you may join the Salesforce ISV Program, and should read the ISV Program Guide.
11. License Management – Salesforce currently offers ISV Partners two EE licenses at no cost to run your business, receive leads, and administer your Force.com apps using the License Management app (LMA).

STEP 7: Post-Launch Support

Be sure to have a support contract in place, post-launch as you will likely need to react to new issues that arise and were not found during testing or the pilot.

STEP 8: Version 2.0

In addition, new customers will have great new feature requests that you’ll likely wish to get started on immediately in a future release.

ForceBrain.com is a full-service Force.com outsourced product development (OPD) team.  Our OPD team has both decades of experience in software product development, as well as the Force.com expertise needed to successfully take products to market.  Essentially, we build SaaS products from concept to public release.

Click on the screenshot below to see an example.

You can turn on this feature at:

SETUP > APP SETUP > CUSTOMIZE > OPPORTUNITIES >UPDATE REMINDERS

You have two options to get the image to your right sent to you in email.

Enable Update Reminders for My Organization – check this to turn on “Update Reminders”.

Automatically Activate Reminders for Users with Direct Reports  – Check this if you want to schedule opportunity update reminders for all your current users and users you add in the future that have direct reports.

Salesforce Update Reminder