Salesforce Chatter goes freemium, retires Sharepoint and Lotus Notes

November 22, 2010 | Author: Adam Levine
Salesforce Chatter

Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, was in good mood during his conference call with financial analysts. First, he boasted that the company's revenues has grown by 30%, and profit - by 100% compared to the previous year, and that in 2012 fiscal year Salesforce expects to set the new great record for a SaaS industry - $2 billion revenue. Secondly, Mark announced that the social collaboration tool Chatter will be available in free edition. Benioff was very proud describing Chatter. This is the most successful Salesforce product in term of annual growth. Since the year after launch, it's used in 60000 companies, that makes it the most popular intranet social network. Among its users - Dell (90 thousand seats), Amazon, Bank of America, Motorola, Siemens and Vodafone. Yahoo! and Nokia use Chatter even not being Salesforce CRM users. And unlike Salesforce CRM users, that get Chatter for free, they pay $15 per user per month.

Chatter free version will have some cut-down functionality and will be available in December. And it will be available only by invites. All Salesforce users will get invites and will be able to send them to their partners and customers.

And of course, Marc Benioff couldn't help saying about the main Chatter competitors - IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Sharepoint.

"Lotus Notes was created before Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) was born. It was a great product, but IBM has done a terrible job in terms of keeping it fresh. Customers have been running this technology for two and three decades. They are hiring people out of school and they are coming into these, 'Productivity Applications,' and are saying, 'I don't know how to use this, this is not how I work. Where is my iPad? Where is my iPhone? Where is my BlackBerry? Where is my graphical user interfaces'. [Comanies] are like, 'well, this is graphical user interface' and 'this is Windows'. It's just junk and that's what Lotus Notes is honestly."

"And I think SharePoint is very much the same thing. It's kind of the grandmother's attic. Customers throw everything into it, [then] they can't find it and they don't know what's up there, and they don't know how to get it out."

See also: Top 10 Enterprise Social Software

Author: Adam Levine
Adam is an expert in project management, collaboration and productivity technologies, team management, and motivation. With an extensive background working at prestigious companies such as Microsoft and Accenture, Adam's in-depth knowledge and experience in the field make him a sought-after professional. Currently, he has ventured into entrepreneurship, owning a thriving consulting and training agency where he imparts invaluable insights and practical strategies to individuals and organizations, empowering them to achieve their goals and maximize their potential. You can contact Adam via email adam@liventerprise.com