Friday, October 2, 2009
Another One of These Cloud Computing Rants and You’ve Got Yourself a Stand-Up Routine, Larry
The passing of a year hasn’t much changed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s opinion of cloud computing. Remarking on the industry’s sudden fascination with the concept at Oracle OpenWorld last September, Ellison reduced it to a thin sheen of windshield condensation. In conversation with former Sun CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi has a few ideas about what Dell should do with the nearly $11 billion in cash reserves it’s sitting on and they don’t include buying Palm. Sacconaghi believes that Dell isn’t interested in a “transformational” acquisition, though its interest in the handset market might suggest otherwise. Rather, the company is mulling the acquisition of small- to medium-sized enterprise-related companies.
“At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don’t make sense.” Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff coughed up that oyster of a sound bite back in February, and judging from the company’s latest financials, it’s at least partly accurate.
Salesforce.com has seen a fair bit of its value evaporate amid the economy’s downward spiral. But the same cannot be said of its business, which is apparently doing quite well. Posting fourth-quarter earnings today, Salesforce.com reported record revenue of nearly $290 million with annual sales exceeding $1 billion. Pretty damn good for a cloud computing company.
If today’s news is a harbinger of things to come, 2009 may be a difficult year for Salesforce.com. The company lost three senior executives this week, among them Steve Cakebread, its president and chief strategy officer.
“We love everybody,” Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff said recently. “We even love Microsoft…. This is our core strategy, love.” Yes, the SAAS enterprise applications vendor loves everyone, but none more than Google. 
