Cloud Computing and Salesforce.com

I recently attended Salesforce's Cloudforce event in Boston. I walked away very impressed with both the Service Cloud and Custom Cloud applications. The Twitter integration and crowdsourcing features were slick. With over 63,000 customers, I believe Salesforce is poised to take the lead position in the cloud computing space -- over Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. I see Salesforce's Force Platform as the future hub for business and custom applications on the web. It shares a lot in common with the iPhone with its intuitive interfaces and large developer community.

I recently read that Japan Post purchased 85,000 seats of the Force platform for the purposes of application development and delivery. Japan Post is likely to benefit from tremendous cost reduction as the typical capital investment in hardware and on-premise software is avoided.

I am currently advising my clients to analyze if existing or planned applications can be moved to the "cloud". The cloud is now here and progressive companies are reaping the benefits.