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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by Jeremiah Owyang, partner, Altimeter Group

Surveying the Social CRM Industry

At the Altimeter Group, business partner Ray Wang (focused on enterprise strategy) and I (customer strategy) are undertaking a major project for a client in the nascent social CRM arena. We’re surveying the landscape to learn about a variety of vendors in the space, and to assess their capabilities and deployments. A small portion of our survey involves seeing who’s eating their own dog food, and truly demonstrating they understand the “social” aspect of social CRM — by living it.

Companies That Sell Social CRM Should Demonstrate Credibility by Living It

While critics may be quick to cite the mere inclusions of a blog or community to a product landing page, the message goes much deeper. Social CRM isn’t just about bolting on a plugin to your system like a new air foil on your minivan but instead is a new way of doing business. The promise of social CRM — responding, anticipating, and making the commitment to improve products and services — says that companies are truly listening to their customers wherever those customers are. Vendors that are assisting brands in bringing this promise to the marketplace need to demonstrate they fully understand the ramifications of social CRM — not just a keyword checklist of the buzzword du jour.

Criteria: How We Graded the Social CRM Vendors

There are four major areas of assessment:

1. Simple sharing of social content from the corporate product page.
2. Surfacing a developer or business community, and a look inside of the discussions in each community, with bonus points for integration with product page.
3. Thought leadership with relevant blogs on the subject, and a gauge of their level of interaction and any Twitter accounts they may have.
4. A subjective look at the overall page experience in the context of a company that’s offering a “social experience.”

Findings: Overall, Social CRM Vendors Aren’t Walking the Talk

We’ve decided to make our findings public (at least for this part of our client deliverable) to see how some of the leading vendors in the Social CRM space are walking the talk.

[See the table 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.

Hello from Oracle’s 2009 user conference, OpenWorld. This week I aim to bring you an insane amount of coverage from the conference. I’m flying solo this year, — Managing Editor Josh Weinberger is crushed he couldn’t make it this year — but you can bet I’ll be Twittering my thumbs off on the @destinationCRM channel. In fact, I already had a Twitterer unfollow me yesterday, saying my keynote coverage was clogging up his Twitter stream. You can’t please everyone, I guess.

Yesterday evening (SUNday) Scott McNealy took the stage to “illuminate” details surrounding Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The moral of the story? Oracle plans to compete head on in the hardware and storage space by investing more in SPARC and Solaris. Oracle Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison’s competitive edge was glaringly apparent during his keynote address. Ellison laughed as he slammed IBM’s computing speed and storage capabilities.  Just two weeks ago, Oracle was fined $10,000 for a Wall Street Journal ad claiming performance that had not been benchmarked.

“I knew we were better,” Ellison said, laughing again, before promising that the performance claim will be benchmarked and re-run in another WSJ ad this week.

This morning’s keynote promises even more pizazz as Oracle’s Charles Phillips and HP’s Ann Livermore take the stage to address technology megatrends. Attendees are buzzing through Moscone wondering if any “surprise guests” will join Oracle executives on stage. Last year’s appearance by Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps caused quite the stir.

Word is that 37,000 people are registered for this year’s event. With Aerosmith performing on Wednesday night and myriad events taking place throughout downtown San Francisco, it’s sure to be a good week. Be sure to tune into destinationCRM.com for news stories on the keynotes and the @destinationCRM Twitter feed for up-to-the-minute coverage.

[UPDATE, Oct. 14, 2009, 5.30p ET: News stories are now available here (Day 2), and here (Day 3).]

By Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal, Beagle Research Group

Market analysis firm IDC figures the market for service and support software will reach $4.2 billion before the end of the first Obama administration. That’s reason enough for software vendors to want to be all over the market like a cheap suit, like white on rice, like a junkyard dog. But as the market moves from on-premises to on-demand you can expect the revenue potential to go way down. That’s the beauty of on-demand computing — score one for the customer.

But whether there are four billion of those dollars or just one billion, that’s still real money — and enough to motivate the behavior of lots of people — so it was no surprise that both Salesforce.com and Oracle shored up their service and support offerings this week. What was fascinating to me is that, despite all the secrecy surrounding each company’s announcement, which I witnessed first hand, the two CRM titans managed to make similar announcements within a day of each other.

I attribute the coincidence to the simple logic of the situation: Each company has built out very good offerings in sales and marketing, so it was time that each gave some extra attention to service and support.

[More after the jump...]

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We don’t have details yet — or even official confirmation — but The Wall Street Journal is reporting [registration required] that Oracle is planning to dramatically expand its portfolio of on-demand offerings, often referred to as software-as-a-service (SaaS). A decade after online-only pioneer Salesforce.com and others began to make inroads into on-demand business software, the shift — assuming the reports turn out to be accurate — will mark a significant turning point for the technology industry, and for CRM in particular.

Here’s the opening of yesterday’s WSJ report:

Oracle Corp. is developing a set of online software offerings, an expansion of the company’s use of a business model it has often resisted.

The software giant is working on seven new online products, including offerings to help business run sales campaigns, keep track of employees and job applicants, according to people briefed on the plans and a company document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The “company document” may be the smoking gun.

Calling software-as-a-service “a business model [Oracle] has often resisted” is more than an understatement, of course — it’s like referring to the New York Yankees as “a team that Red Sox fans have often disliked.”

More after the jump…

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Oracle announced a $7.4 billion deal for Sun Microsystems just a few weeks after the IBM deal for Sun fell through. Oracle now controls a significant open-source alternative and a nice piece of the high-end computing business.

These open-source components had been viewed as the alternative to the dominance of the Big 4 (or “MISO” — Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and Oracle). In addition, Oracle gains an innovation engine with the assets of Sun’s Labs groups, which pioneered a series of advances that include potential enterprise solutions for the virtual world.

The deal continues Oracle’s path to acquiring deeper components of the enterprise-computing stack, including appliances. Here’s how the addition of Sun expands the stack:

• Middleware — While Java and Solaris may appear to be the crown jewels in the deal, Oracle has managed to slowly buy out other stack competitors (i.e. BEA and now Sun) and integrate them into the Fusion Middleware suite of tools for custom development and its own Fusion Applications product lines. Sun complements BEA. In addition, the open-source stack will also provide Oracle with a new avenue to the reach the small-and-midsize business (SMB) market.
• Database — Oracle takes out the low-cost competitor to SQL server on the low end and gets a shot at converting them to Oracle DB instead of IBM. Adding Sun’s MySQL expands an SMB entry point as well as the removal of a competitor.
• Hardware — Oracle gains another great recurring revenue (maintenance) base with Sun’s Solaris. This complements Oracle’s large and profitable existing database installations on Solaris that would have fallen prey to the IBM DB2 team. While there’s some talk about Oracle selling the hardware side — see this eWEEK article — this seems unlikely as Oracle focuses in on the appliance market. Even more important is the fact that Oracle can take Sun’s tools and create a purpose-built appliance running its database, middleware, and applications.

The bottom line: Oracle succeeds at post-merger integration where others often fail.

Despite skepticism, Oracle has made these acquisitions work from a financial perspective, with year-over-year quarterly profit growth that has generally been well above 20 percent. Some key success factors include:

• Acquiring companies for the recurring revenue. Oracle’s first set of deals (i.e., PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems) focused on installed-base acquisitions that provided a strong foundation of support-and-maintenance customers. This base of recurring revenues provided Oracle with the room to continue strong research-and-development investment while reducing overall costs. With this deal, Oracle gains another highly profitable maintenance base, adding pressure to competitors. This acquisition delivers Sun’s profitable Solaris revenue stream while enabling Oracle to move into a maintenance business for open-source software.
• Eating its own dog food. In the late 1990s, Oracle made a major commitment to re-engineering its back-office processes using its own applications. As a result, Oracle has become highly efficient, with a ratio of general and administrative expenses to revenues of 3 percent to 4 percent — in most calendar quarters, one percentage point lower than SAP’s and even lower than other large software vendors such as Microsoft and Symantec. Expect Oracle to put the Sun assets into its arsenal of tools for delivering software innovation.
• Mastering post-merger integration. With two former investment bankers at the helm, Oracle has one of the best post-merger integration teams in the business. Oracle’s profit performance signals that it has been able to add new companies — and those companies’ streams of revenues — while keeping costs down. Sun will provide considerable synergies in both the short and long run.

Related Coverage:

• 20090420 CNBC – Squawk Box with Karen Tso & Maura Fogarty “VIDEO -Oracle Snatches Sun, Foils IBM’s Bid“
• 20090420 The Associated Press – Jordan Robertson and Michael Liedtke “After IBM dalliance, Sun goes to Oracle for $7.4B“
• 20090420 USA TODAY – Jon Swartz and Leslie Cauley “Oracle to buy Sun for $7.4B after IBM drops bid“
• 20090420 SearchOracle.com/TechTarget – Ed Scannell “Will Sun help Oracle eclipse IBM?“
• 20090420 DestinationCRM – Lauren McKay “Oracle Takes a Shine to Sun Microsystems“
• 20090420 Managing Automation – Emily-Sue Sloane “Oracle to Spend $7.4B to Buy Sun Microsystems“
• 20090420 The Guardian – Andrew Clark “Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems comes as surprise to software industry“
• 20090420 Computer Zeitung – Hans-Thomas Hengl “Mit der Kontrolle über Java sitzt Oracle am Schalthebel des Softwaremarkts“
• 20090420 Internet News – Alex Goldman “Oracle Buys Sun in IBM’s Wake“
• 20090420 Infoworld – Tom Sullivan “Can Oracle make sense of Sun’s hardware?“
• 20090420 eWeek – Nicholas Kolakowski “Oracle, Sun Deal Strengthens Competition Against IBM, HP, Cisco“

Your Point of View
What do you think about the acquisition of Sun? Did you count on Sun as your open-source stack alternative to the Big 4? You can leave public comments on this post, or send a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com. Comments are preferred! Thanks, and looking forward to your POV!

R “Ray” Wang is an analyst at Forrester Research. His personal blog, A Software Insider’s Point of View, can be found here: http://blog.softwareinsider.org. This post first appeared on his site and appears here with his permission.