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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

You know what's awesome? That the journalist makes perfect sense to me. This guy is just apparently not the target audience.

First off, the more data that Salesforce controls, the better they have locked in their customers... Or the more customers they have. I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare.

The second clip talks about using social networking to learn more about their customers and increase retention. Not that mystical.

The third throws some buzzwords, sure, but it also warns people that not everything that's called a 'cloud' is actually a 'cloud'. In other words, some services behave like you expect 'cloud' services to (insane uptime and rendundancy) and others don't.

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I can't speak to your personal understanding, of course, but one thing to be wary of is that buzzword-laden speech often forms a tabula rasa. Since it means so little, listeners "fill in the blanks" and make up their own explanation for what it means. It is not surprising that the listener's interpretation closely agrees with their point of view.

Thus, people who use a lot of buzzwords can often be perceived as sensible and their speech as intelligent. Not for what their speech actually says, but for what the listener thinks it says.

This is one of the reasons buzzwords have become so common in business and politics. They are an effective means of selling the speaker to listeners, each of whom believes that they understand what the speaker is saying and agrees with it.

I have no idea what "post cloud world" means, but other than that, I agree with your assessment. There's a difference between "your phrasing screams that you are an outsider and you don't have a full understanding of what you are talking about" and "I truly do not comprehend what you mean."

I would be surprised if readers of this site honestly could not translate the buzz-filled marketing speak into what they actually are doing.

By him saying he's ready for the "post cloud world" shows that Salesforce is aware of the "buzz word" world we live in and that Salesforce is staying on the cutting edge.

It seems to me that they are interested in customer retention, being the go-to location for storing important business data, and that their business is much more concerned with having the best and most solid infrastructural, and they aren't simply creating a "cloud" for the sake of creating a "cloud". It's about what the "cloud" IS and what it's supposed to provide.

So, if the "cloud" isn't the best solution anymore, they will be ready for that.

I thought it was a pretty well done piece.

As a former English-major nutjob, I do see some problems with how those sentences are constructed. The "internal activities and externally" is very awkward phrasing.

"I have no idea what "post cloud world" means"

I'll use an example:

Client: "I'll be honest we've been looking at some other cloud solutions and they're a lot more competitive on price"

Salesforce: "Yeah if all you want is a cloud solution. What is their post cloud solution?"

Client: "Oh ... umm they didn't even mention that."

Salesforce: "I bet they don't even have one."

I will give you another example

INT. SALESFORCE MARKETING OFFICE

CMO: "we need something new, we have sold 'no software', we have sold 'cloud', we need something to sell to investors to keep this stock buzzing, after all we don't want the company to be valued on fundamentals, like Microsoft"

EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM LAUGHS

CMO: "I have a Forbes reporter coming in tomorrow, I need to give him something"

Marketing VP: "ok, how about 'post-cloud world'. it means that we are doing whatever is next"

CMO: "brilliant! a 'post-cloud world'. ok now who is getting lunch, i'm starving"

Your summary is more sensible than what the journalist wrote.

> I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare.

Can you explain how, please? There are simple ways to extract your data from Salesforce (weekly export, bulk APIs, etc). What, per se, would cause said nightmare?

The second clip talks about using social networking to learn more about their customers and increase retention. Not that mystical.

So SalesForce wants to use social networking to know more about the companies that use it's services? Is that what they mean by this?

Yes. As they said, it will allow them to better lock in their customers because they can better offer what their existing customers desire.

Flipped around into being politically correct, they can better serve the needs of their customers, which will make those customers want to stay.

> I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare.

Talking about this, does anyone know a good CRM to use for a web agency? We've tested salesforce for a month and it feels over-engineered and unintuitive.

You know what's even more awesome? That I can see that the journalist thinks he makes sense but clearly doesn't. I guess apparently you're not the target audience for this blog post.

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