Mr. Benioff, Tear Down That Wall
blogs.zoho.com
blogs.zoho.com
As a developer I'm worried that these open web platforms are not so open. I worry that my data will be hijacked, that my apps will be locked to one vendor, that my provider might be my main competitor.
In fact, several months after those events happened, there were people on their team who were uncomfortable with Benioff's stance. They tried to get him to change his mind, to no avail - a second set of interactions happened where one of their execs tried to get us in to Force.com, but he was vetoed by Benioff himself much to his disappointment and frustration (he ended up leaving Salesforce, so he won't be impacted when I say this). It was only after all that happened that I decided to go public with this.
We still stand ready to integrate our suite, just as we do with Facebook, with Google single sign-on and so on. The key question stands: would they let Zoho play in their ecosystem? If not what is the meaning of being "open"?
After all, Benioff compares Salesforce's "openness" with Microsoft, but consider the contrast. AdventNet, the parent company of Zoho, sells most of its software on the Windows platform (like most software companies do, no surprise there). We didn't have to seek permission from Microsoft to create applications on Windows. I don't know the terms, but I bet Microsoft would let us play on the Azure cloud platform, because they know a thing or two about empowering third party developers. Google lets us offer their users the option to sign-in to Zoho using their Google ID. Google lets us integrate Gears for the offline version - they even gave us publicity when we finished the integration. Google APIs are open to any and all vendors, including Zoho, on equal terms.
Pft...lame excuse... :^)
To address lhorn, this post was written and made it to HN when our India folks were asleep (13.5 hour time difference). And it may be hard for you to accept, but our company doesn't operate that way - the kind of "astro-turfing" you describe. I post at least once a week on Zoho blogs, and this is probably the second time ever anything made it to HN. And it was not a personal rant - it is about a major software-as-a-service vendor who acts in ways totally contrary to their public posturing. Keep in mind, they invited us to be there on AppX, and we did the integration work with their support. As the CEO of Zoho, I deal with hundreds of companies, large and small, in relationships that succeed and in relationships that fail to materialize. What happened with Salesforce was unusual enough to warrant calling out - and should be a cautionary tale for other companies.
I wonder if this is something specific to Zoho, or if they're taking an anticompetitive stance in general.
And why is it even supposed to be interesting for anyone outside of Zoho/Salesforce? I wish we could see IP addresses of people who voted this stuff up: I wonder what percentage of originated from India.
Sridhar, here is an idea for you: write a post titled "Zoho shall pay no taxes" and make your workers vote it up on every public news site.