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Disrupt NY Paula Long, CEO of DataGravity will be speaking at Disrupt NY Get $1000 Off Tickets Now

Disrupt SF 2012

September 8 - 12, 2012 | The Concourse at San Francisco Design Center, San Francisco, CA

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Enterprise
  • Cheaper Sensors Will Fuel The Age Of Smart Everything

    Cheaper Sensors Will Fuel The Age Of Smart Everything

  • YC-Backed BuildScience’s Platform Ties Hardware Systems Together In Big Office Buildings

    YC-Backed BuildScience’s Platform Ties Hardware Systems Together In Big Office Buildings

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  • Paperspace Lets Anyone Access A Better Personal Computer That Lives In The Cloud

    Paperspace Lets Anyone Access A Better Personal Computer That Lives In The Cloud

  • Box’s Latest Vertical Package Focuses On Financial Services

    Box’s Latest Vertical Package Focuses On Financial Services

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disrupt 2012
  • Airtime Launches Topic Chatrooms; Debate Who Should Win Disrupt Battlefield

    Airtime Launches Topic Chatrooms; Debate Who Should Win Disrupt Battlefield

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    Yammer’s David Sacks On Why The Startup Opportunity Ain’t What It Used To Be (And How Microsoft Integration Is Coming Soon)

  • Uber’s Travis Kalanick On Regulators: You Have To Grit Your Teeth, Be A Warrior, Or Do Something Less Disruptive

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Salesforce Wants To Kill Asana, Box And Okta? CEO Benioff Says ‘It’s Not About The Hunger Games’

Posted Sep 11, 2012 by Ingrid Lunden (@ingridlunden)
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Salesforce.com is a major force in the CRM space (it even managed to nab CRM as its stock ticker when it went public on the NYSE) for the trailblazing they have done in taking enterprise services into the cloud. It’s also made a big effort to acquire new services to incorporate them into its platform (the biggest of late being Buddy Media for $689 million). But today, at TC Disrupt, Marc Benioff also laid out some detail about how it is also launching a bunch of products that incorporate features from some of the most disruptive startups.

Salesforce has developed or is developing an Asana competitor, a Box competitor and an Okta competitor. Are you trying to kill off all these startups, moderator Mike Arrington asked him? It’s not exactly like that, Benioff said. “Our industry is not about The Hunger Games,” he said. “I don’t look at business as a zero sum game. It’s about delivering value to customers, to give value back to customers.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Some more unceremonious people might call this a cynical exercise in cloning, but Benioff explained it like this. It’s about replicating certain experiences in the place where his customers are already doing business: “Our customers want a Dropbox for the enterprise, and they want it integrated into the [Salesforce] platform,” he said. “They want the applications built in there.”

He says that this is why Saleforce has Chatterbox, a kind of Yammer competitor, a couple of years ago.

It’s going to take Salesforce to further pastures, too. Okta, which lets enterprises use a single sign-on for a number of cloud-based applications, is something that Salesforce has created for itself, too. “We have something to help manage your Salesforce identity,” across different Salesforce services. “It’s about identity as a service,” he said.

It’s also next week, at its Dreamforce conference (70k registered attendees, he says), planning to unveil something that sounds a lot like Asana or Huddle: it’s called Work.com, and we’ll probably be hearing a bit more about it next week. The site, if you visit it now, doesn’t give much away. There is also Do.com that may play a role here (this is also an Asana competitor).

On a lighter note, Arrington asked Benioff a lot about what he likes to do to unwind from all the stresses of running Salesforce. On the subject of his frequent getaways to Hawaii, Arrington brought up the fact that Larry Ellison, CEO of rival Oracle, recently bought an island in Hawaii. Does that bother Benioff?

“As long as he’s not on the same island I’m on, it’s okay with me,” he said.

Update: Box’s CEO Aaron Levie had this to say in response:

A startup without competition is like a rapper without a rival. It's just awkward.

—
Aaron Levie (@levie) September 11, 2012
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Fireside Chat With Marc Benioff, CEO and Co-Founder of Salesforce.Com
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CrunchBase

  • Salesforce

    • Founded 1999
    •    
    • Overview Salesforce is an enterprise cloud computing company that provides business software on a subscription basis. The company is best known for its on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. Salesforce was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, and went public in June 2004. Salesforce has been a pioneer in developing enterprise platforms through its innovative AppExchange …
    • Location San Francisco, California
    • Categories Software, Hardware + Software, Enterprises, Cloud Computing
    • Founders Marc Benioff, Parker Harris
    • Website http://www.salesforce.com
    • Full profile for Salesforce

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Google Launches Open Course Builder

Posted Sep 11, 2012

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