So the news is that Salesforce.com is raising $500 million so that it can go on a buying spree. Half a billion isn’t what it used to be, but it can still buy a good weekend in Vegas or a nice stable of emerging-technology companies.

What would I do with that much money? Even assuming Vegas is off the list, I still have a few ideas.

First things first: Why borrow half a billion when you’ve already got over a billion in cash and marketable securities on your balance sheet? The question answers itself: You borrow when you can get money at attractive rates and the best time to be a borrower is when you’re in a financial position secure enough to walk away from a middling deal. In my humble opinion, the company’s borrowing the money simply because it can — and because coming out of a recession is a nice time to pick up some bargains.

A “bargain” here would be an emerging company with innovative intellectual property and a weak balance sheet.

So what is it likely to do with the cash? Find out after the jump.

Let’s digress for a moment. Seems to me that CRM is in need of a makeover. The economic drivers that I think will be driving business in the next two decades include high and dynamic costs for energy and transportation, mature markets, and increasingly savvy customers who will not suffer fools. Companies that expect to be competitive in those conditions will need different and better business processes — and the software to support them.

As configured today, CRM gets Cs and Ds when examined against those economic drivers.

First, I’d buy technologies that enable a company to substitute social awareness for transportation. As transportation becomes more expensive and business people travel less, the options are:

• a) to not do business or
• b) to find other means.

I’m betting we’ll choose business by other means — and that leads to awareness over transportation. CRM gets a D in awareness so far, and that needs to change. There are enough emerging companies getting close to figuring out awareness in a business context — I’d be a buyer in that market.

Then I’d look at the community side of social media. CRM has been chasing outbound social media with the ardor of a superannuated sophomore — with similarly mixed results. It’s been a one-way street so far and, frankly, I’m not sure if outbound social media companies know how to dance with CRM in the first place.

Inbound or community-oriented social media has been another story. Inbound companies have ignored CRM thus far, preferring to think that what they do is different. It ain’t. I’d look to buy an inbound community company and take the time to establish the business process support that will make one plus one equal 14.

Then there’s video, Voice over Internet Protocol, and audio. These technologies offer some great opportunities to CRM but they have to scale and come down a big learning curve — pronto. CRM has to have a native facility for making three-to-five-minute videos on the desktop — with or without people, but with narration and other audio effects. These creations used to be called “commercials”; we’ll find another name soon for this narrowcast cousin. I’d buy some companies in these areas — more on speculation at this point, but also for the experience value.

[Editors' Note: For more on the current state of video technologies in CRM, see Associate Editor Jessica Tsai's December 2009 feature, "Video Is More Than Viral," as well as the related story in that issue, "Video, At Your Service."]

As part of the foray into video, we should include a company or technology that supports Web-based meetings. When jet fuel hits eight or 10 bucks a gallon — can you guarantee it won’t? — user groups, training sessions, and annual meetings (just to name a few meeting types) will migrate to the Web. And that’ll be a good thing, because it will save customers on the costs of travel and enable vendors to hold more rather than fewer big meetings.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Salesforce.com is not exclusively a CRM company anymore. As a platform company, it constantly has to be mindful of the need to have that platform be well-stocked, which means containing all of the tools that business application developers of the near future will demand. Given the economic drivers, you can bet that transaction-oriented CRM — or CRM with a few social refinements — will not be enough.

This isn’t a complete list of Salesforce.com’s options, of course — but, like Mark Twain said about a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a good start.