When to Use Force - Five Strategic Questions to Ask Before Building on Salesforce.com's Force.com Platform
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amisra
Nov 24, 2009, 4:29:05 PM11/24/09
to Cloud Computing
There is no doubt that Force.com, Salesforce.com’s platform-as-a-
service (PaaS), is the leading cloud computing platform today. If you
are an independent software vendor (ISV) or an entrepreneur looking to
build commercial products in a public cloud, it’s probably on your
radar already. Force.com gives you the potential to save on
development time and get a product to market faster--even more
important, the potential to build a business with fewer resources.
Does that mean you can create a profitable cloud business by building
your product on Force.com? The answer is--not necessarily.
In reality, most companies struggle to see the return on investment
after all their development effort. Here’s why: In a perfect world,
seat sales through the AppExchange would happen at the same rate that
consumers download music on iTunes. Business buyers, however, are
harder to reach and take forever to convince. Both traditional ISVs
and startups usually discover they have been overly optimistic not
only about how fast they can sell but also about what price targets
they can achieve. To make things worse, ISVs find the product
development, maintenance, and delivery costs to be much more expensive
than anticipated.
Why does this happen when the world seems to agree that cloud equals
reduced costs? It happens because ISVs don’t ask the right questions
before jumping into the cloud. All ISVs want to know is the answer to
two fundamental questions:
- Is Force.com the right platform?
- How much would it cost to build our product?
These questions are good. However, they are only related to product
development, not profitability. Looking to build a successful cloud
business requires much more input than just developing an application.
If you don’t ask the questions upfront to understand the cloud
business model, you could be writing checks for years before seeing
any revenue. Here are the most important questions you must ask before
you begin building:
Read the full article at:
http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/When-to-Use-the-Force-57661.aspx
service (PaaS), is the leading cloud computing platform today. If you
are an independent software vendor (ISV) or an entrepreneur looking to
build commercial products in a public cloud, it’s probably on your
radar already. Force.com gives you the potential to save on
development time and get a product to market faster--even more
important, the potential to build a business with fewer resources.
Does that mean you can create a profitable cloud business by building
your product on Force.com? The answer is--not necessarily.
In reality, most companies struggle to see the return on investment
after all their development effort. Here’s why: In a perfect world,
seat sales through the AppExchange would happen at the same rate that
consumers download music on iTunes. Business buyers, however, are
harder to reach and take forever to convince. Both traditional ISVs
and startups usually discover they have been overly optimistic not
only about how fast they can sell but also about what price targets
they can achieve. To make things worse, ISVs find the product
development, maintenance, and delivery costs to be much more expensive
than anticipated.
Why does this happen when the world seems to agree that cloud equals
reduced costs? It happens because ISVs don’t ask the right questions
before jumping into the cloud. All ISVs want to know is the answer to
two fundamental questions:
- Is Force.com the right platform?
- How much would it cost to build our product?
These questions are good. However, they are only related to product
development, not profitability. Looking to build a successful cloud
business requires much more input than just developing an application.
If you don’t ask the questions upfront to understand the cloud
business model, you could be writing checks for years before seeing
any revenue. Here are the most important questions you must ask before
you begin building:
Read the full article at:
http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/When-to-Use-the-Force-57661.aspx
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