You may have read Salesforce.com for Dummies; Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner probably isn't among its biggest fans. But he was interested in dummies for Salesforce.com this week – or at least a baby's dummy for Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.
In his address to the faithful at the Microsoft Partner Conference in Los Angeles, Turner turned up the heat on rival vendors such as Oracle, Google and Salesforce.com, striking some remarkably personal notes as he did so against both Benioff and the whole Oracle senior management team. Turner declared:
“We've got this humongous pacifier to stick in the mouth of Marc Benioff called Dynamics CRM Online. It is so good to have something to compete with Salesforce.com head to head...when you think about Salesforce, the best thing I can tell you is don't let the customers get forced into paying these exorbitant prices and hidden charges for a solution that doesn't quite meet their business needs. There's a great quote from a customer, Vickie Flores, who said, 'We've basically outgrown Salesforce.com. Getting information out of it is really difficult, and the price point is extremely high. And with Microsoft Dynamics CRM you get all these features out of the box, which is great.'The customer says it best. The truth lies with the customer. ”
But it wasn't just Benioff that was on the receiving end of Turner's critique of the competitive landscape:
“Competing is a test of will. It is simply a test of will. Competitors make us better, ladies and gentlemen. We have some great competitors, we've got some phenomenal competitors out there. And I'm grateful for those competitors, because every single one of them makes us better. But you know what, it's fun to get up in the morning competing, it's fun to really go after it in a big way. ”
First up was Google, its Apps and the inevitable comparison with the recently released Microsoft Office 365:
“Office365 is to Google Apps as Xbox 360 is to Pong.Two and three years ago, all of the headlines all over the world said, 'Hey, Microsoft, you're in big, big trouble; Google is going to wipe you out and wipe out your Office business. They're going to take you out'. Guess what, it hasn't happened. It is so exciting to be able to talk about Office365. I can only describe what Office365 is in sort of two words. You could say technically it's three words. But Office365, ladies and gentlemen, is nothing but a Google butt-kicker, that's all it is. That's all it is. And the reality is customers know it, every customer knows it. ”
Turner advocated customers should look a lot more closely at Google and what it represents as a company:
“This is a company that has a mission statement that they have to remind themselves not to do evil, right? When you think about the trouble they're getting into with some of their statements, claiming certain things and allegations that they're dealing with, this is nothing but help to us. We don't scan your e-mail. We're not snooping your Wi-Fi. We're going to continue to do the things we do well, which is help you become more productive. ”
As for Oracle, well now Turner was shooting fish in a barrel as pictures of CEO Larry Ellison, CFO Safra Catz and President Mark Hurd flashed up on screen behind him:
“To really talk to a customer about whether they should bet on Oracle let's just take a look at the cast of characters and you make the call...I don't even know what to say! ”
Turner told the partner audience that there is a great opportunity to make inroad into the installed Oracle customer base even with the imminent release of the first of the next generation Oracle Fusion applications:
“This Fusion product that they have, that they're beginning to make some traction around and some noise around, is a huge opportunity for us,. Their lack of focus on customer service, taking care of customers and doing the right thing by customers is catching up with them. It's been very lucrative to them financially, but you and I both know how many happy Oracle customers are you talking to? It's about like Siebel. So the reality for us to engage and really get in there and don't let customers get locked into Oracle is tremendous. We can rescue the Oracle customers in a big way, and we can continue to do that. ”
Against all this hangs the backdrop of Microsoft's Cloud ambitions which Turner made the number one priority for the firm:
“ No. 1 is no surprise, winning in Cloud services. This is a multi-year journey and we're going to continue to have that multi-year journey, and we're going to continue to double down on consumer and commercial and business Cloud services in all ways, shapes, and sizes. We have that big aspiration of a continuous Cloud service for every person and every business, and we're going to continue to drive that. ”
And there's a place at the table for the Microsoft partner community, he reassured his audience:
“ I want to remind every single one of you that there is a place in the Cloud for every single partner type. There is an opportunity for you to build, tell, sell, and support all the cloud services that we offer. And we invite you, encourage you, and want to drag you to the Cloud if needed to come with us on this multi-year journey. It's an exciting opportunity for us, and it opens up a whole new world of opportunities for both our businesses. ”
tags for Dummies for Salesforce and butt-kicks for Google - Microsoft's Cloudy vision
