
After twenty years, what Marc Benioff got right and wrong about the cloud - chuy08
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/17/after-twenty-years-of-salesforce-what-marc-benioff-got-right-and-wrong-about-the-cloud/
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simula67
> Adobe Suite successfully made the switch from the upfront model to thriving
> subscription businesses

I hope this new trend of crippling software, after a set time period, comes to
an end. I can understand web apps like Microsoft Office 365 becoming
inaccessible, but apps that are installed on my PC and that I paid for ? That
is a bad trend

~~~
grantlmiller
I think that a lot of this is actually being driven by new accounting
standards (ASC 606 - Revenue Recognition), basically the new rules state that
for subscription revenue to be recognized over time, the software must be
materially disabled at the end of the period. This matters mainly b/c it has
tax implications. If companies don't disable the software the entire value of
the customer's contract must be recognized up front (as well as taxed
upfront), this is true even if the payments are still made monthly. Paying
taxes now on revenue that comes in later isn't good for cashflows and as such
it creates a business problem that trickles down to consumers.

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lotsofpulp
While that may be a factor, I think it was inevitable to go to a subscription
business rather than one time sale. Consistent cash flow, vendor lock in, no
risk of piracy, ability to raise prices quickly (or slowly), not having to
support everyone's Windows installations or whatever OS they may have full of
malware.

Who wouldn't want to have a rent seeking business, given the option?

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PacifyFish
Benioff is undoubtedly a great CEO, but I wonder which other early employees
deserve credit for the paradigm shift in B2B to SaaS.

Surely cofounder and CTO Parker Harris had a lot to do with multitenancy and
countless other technical innovations, yet he gets very little play in the
media. Maybe he likes it that way.

~~~
sharcerer
Yeah. Like Craig Silverstein at Google ( now at khan academy,last I heard).
Even for Tesla, Straubel deserves much more recognition, but I think he
himself doesn't appear much in public. IMO, Larry and Sergey are also seldom
in public for the past few years.

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matchagaucho
Not mentioned in the article, but Salesforce was a pioneer for Developer
engagement:

    
    
        * Free developer sandbox instance of Salesforce
        * IDE plug-ins (Eclipse, ...)
        * API first. SOAP and REST APIs for everything
        * Object oriented database manipulation language
        * Visual DB schema designer
        * "App store" distribution model
    

These features are considered table stakes for any new SaaS/PaaS vendor.

~~~
prdonahue
It's been a decade since I've tried writing any queries against their
"database" but at the time you couldn't do any sort of JOIN. Has that changed?

~~~
NittLion78
In SOQL you can do it with a nested SELECT, but it's not as intuitive as your
standard outer join in SQL:

[https://developer.salesforce.com/page/A_Deeper_look_at_SOQL_...](https://developer.salesforce.com/page/A_Deeper_look_at_SOQL_and_Relationship_Queries_on_Force.com)

