Summit must be the secular name our species came up with when we decided that certain business meetings had to have the same weight as religious conversions.

I’m not trying to be contentious by using this vaguely religious metaphor, so please consider me a radical centrist. But after a few months of vendor meetings for the analyst community in which each took us to the mountaintop to survey — via PowerPoint — a future vision for the valley below, I am almost all summitted out.

The religious reference struck me this week at the SAP Summit, the vendor’s very good analyst gathering in Boston, because, like some religious conversions, there seems to be a necessary pain component intended to make the conversion stick. (In most analyst meetings, the pain comes from sitting still for many hours of the aforementioned PowerPoint presentations.)

So, what did I learn? Well, lots — though I’m a CRM guy and much of what was proffered involved visions of a broader valley. The biggest impression I came away with was intramural since, having been to this year’s Oracle OpenWorld and Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce, I’m in a mood to compare, contrast, synthesize, and perhaps even prescribe.

"Will It Blend?" What do you get when you puree a season's worth of vendor events?

Put everything I saw at these and other conclaves into a food processor, run it on high until something resembling peanut butter forms, and the result, to me, looks like this:

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing has won the battle, maybe even the war, but the victory is not enough to secure a homogeneous peace.

Translation: SaaS is important and remains the future of software, but there are multiple reasons why it will not reign supreme — not for a while at least.

[More, after the jump...]

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So here’s a new feature: We’re going to start aggregating each month’s posts, for easier reference.

We’ll start this off with a few groupings from the month of October — which, if you’ll permit a moment of horn-blowing, I have to say I’m really proud of. We covered a lot of ground in the month, literally and figuratively, with staffers filing on-the-scene dispatches from nearly a dozen events at various locations nationwide, and guest-blogposts from not only our regular contributors but several newcomers as well.

October also marks the introduction of these monthly archives (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each month), and compendiums of coverage from all the big events (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each event). In the Comments below, I hope you’ll let us know if we’re giving you the kind of material you want.

For starters, here’s a blog-only exclusive, one I hope you’ve been watching all along:

Eric Barkin’s “Eric Across America” series of blogposts, a firsthand look at JetBlue’s “All-You-Can-Jet” promotion from the perspective of a participant:

• Eric Across America, Part I: The Story of One Man’s Journey into the Heart of JetBlue and JetBlue’s Entry into the Heart of That Man http://sn.im/dcrmblog100909b
• Eric Across America, Part II: Buying the JetBlue Pass http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209b
• Twitter Drove JetBlue Promotion — Eric Across America, Part II(b) http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309c
• Eric Across America, Part III: Booking Flights http://sn.im/dcrmblog101509a
• Eric Across America, Part IV: Trouble in the Contact Center http://sn.im/dcrmblog102009b
• Eric Across America, Part V: JetBlue Levies a Penalty? http://sn.im/dcrmblog102609b

And our posts from this year’s Oracle OpenWorld #oow09:

• Hello From OpenWorld ’09 http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209a
• GUEST-BLOG: The Perplexities (and Fun) of Oracle OpenWorld, by Beagle Research Group’s Denis Pombriant http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309b
• A Keynote That Will Pump (Clap) You Up http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409b
• GUEST-BLOG: Overloading on Oracle, Both Good and Bad http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409c, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• GUEST-BLOG: Cloudy Computing at Oracle OpenWorld http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409d, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• Also keep an eye out for our compendium post of #OOW09 coverage from across the Web.

The rest of the month’s posts — including coverage from The Conference Board’s Social Media Summit, the DMA 2009 show, eMetrics ‘09, the RightNow Summit ‘09, and Forrester Research’s Forrester Consumer Forum — are after the jump.

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Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference has barely opened its doors and there’s already plenty of howling going on.

Yesterday, I reported that Microsoft had set up an ersatz truth squad for the event. Today, SugarCRM joined the act.

[Editors' Note: According to SugarCRM representatives, 1,000 copies of a "book" were distributed at San Francisco's Moscone Center in advance of this morning's opening keynote by Salesforce.com Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff. The "book" is a send-up of Benioff's recent Behind the Cloud memoir, excerpts of which appear in CRM's November 2009 issue about Salesforce.com's 10-year history.

Lisa Holden, a spokesperson for SugarCRM from Schwartz Communications, told CRM magazine that, as of noon Pacific Time today, a Salesforce.com customer has already confirmed its switch to SugarCRM as a result of the company's offer for "a free data migration for Salesforce.com users through the end of the year."]

After the jump, you’ll find the email I received, in its entirety — along with my commentary on SugarCRM’s move.

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Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2009 "Chatter" swag #df09 (Photo: Jessica Tsai / CRM magazine)

At Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, CRM Associate Editor Jessica Tsai is live-twittering Marc Benioff’s opening keynote as we speak — find her tweetstream at @jesstsai, and the conference hashtag is #df09; her coverage will appear here on the blog and over at destinationCRM.com for the rest of the week.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d thrill you with the live-twittering from the company’s conference call with media and analysts last night to discuss its third-quarter financial results.

Benioff and CFO Graham Smith were on the call, and you can find my tweets after the jump.

But first, a teaser — and Comment bait:

• Tu 11/17 Promising a major, MAJOR pair of surprise guests on Thursday at #df09. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17 [Any guesses about #Benioff's teaser? @ciscosystems' John Chambers? @Google's Brin/Page? Leave them in the Comments, below...]
• Tu 11/17 One last guess (for now) abt the “major, MAJOR” guests #Benioff teased for #df09 on Th: #Apple’s Steve Jobs? [Benioff talks at length in his new book about his admiration for Jobs, dating back to Benioff's short stint at Apple in the ’80s.]

Benioff, you’ll recall, made a shocking appearance at Oracle OpenWorld last month — in fact, he referenced it in the conference call (see below). Earlier in the month, Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal at CRM consultancy Beagle Research Group, casually wondered if Larry Ellison might return the favor with an appearance at Dreamforce.

Oh, and here’s the company’s Q3 press release, if you want to read the whole thing.

Salesforce.com is twittering under its corporate handle (@salesforce) and also under an event-specific channel for Dreamforce (@dreamforce).

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Last year it was Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps. This year, Oracle Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison, is bringing The Terminator, Kindergarten Cop, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on stage to discuss innovation.

Ellison is also said to be addressing Oracle’s Fusion Apps during the afternoon keynote. What exactly he will be announcing is unknown; however, in July, Oracle divulged that the applications will be delivered on demand — in addition to on premise. Attendees are eagerly awaiting news surrounding the apps. And knowing Ellison, a bit of competitor bashing is likely to accompany the Oracle announcements.

Stay tuned for live-twittering from @destinationCRM and other CRM press and analyst people such as @lager, @ekolsky, @pgreenbe @brentleary, and @DrNatalie. Check out Denis Pombriant’s dispatch from OpenWorld on our blog and be sure to read Paul Greenberg’s coverage of Oracle and Social CRM on ZDNet.