

Mr. Benioff, Tear Down That Wall  - senthil_rajasek
http://blogs.zoho.com/uncategorized/mr-benioff-tear-down-that-wall/

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sutro
Keep up the great work, Sridhar Vembu. Many of us are rooting for you and
Zoho. Your example of a bootstrapped startup successfully taking on the
largest players in the industry is inspiring. I think Zoho is one of the most
under-appreciated business stories of 2008.

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sidsavara
This may be the most relevant hacker news I have seen all day. If it's not
true, I expect a strong response back. And if it is true, I hope there is a
good explanation or things change quickly.

~~~
deepster
I'd like to hear the other side of the story as well. I certainly hope it's
not true.

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.

~~~
sridharvembu
Alas, everything I wrote is true, it exactly happened the way I describe in my
post. To be honest, I haven't seen a platform with as myopic a strategy as
Salesforce, not from Microsoft, not from Google, not from Facebook, not by a
long shot, so their situation is a bit unique.

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.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Thank you for having the courage to hold Benioff personally accountable. I
agree with your attitude and views. If your development HQ wasn't in India,
I'd be asking you for a job.

~~~
thomasmallen
_"If your development HQ wasn't in India"_

Pft...lame excuse... :^)

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sridharvembu
Thanks folks, as a Hacker News regular, I am truly honored to have this
featured here.

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.

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subwindow
That's really interesting- I, too, had flagged Salesforce as an 'open'
company. Their API is comparatively good, and the AppExchange is virtually
unparalleled in terms of openness to third parties.

I wonder if this is something specific to Zoho, or if they're taking an
anticompetitive stance in general.

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azharcs
One of the important lessons in Tech is not to moon the Giant. Lot of things
are personal in Business, just ask Netscape.

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lhorn
63 points for these "news"? A public rant about a competitor is "news" here?
And how ethical is it to blog about such things? I've never seen a CEO of a
company publicly bitching about how badly competitors treat him. Jesus I know
for sure to never approach Zoho with a business proposal in fear of turning
any potential dispute into a dirty laundry hanging in public. 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.

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lhorn
63 points for these "news"? A public rant about a competitor is "news" here?
And how ethical is it to blog about such things? I've never seen a CEO of a
company publicly bitching about how badly competitors treat him. Jesus I know
for sure to never approach Zoho with a business proposal in fear of turning
any potential dispute into a dirty laundry hanging in public.

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.

~~~
thomasmallen
If this continues to be voted down...will it turn the same gray as the
background?

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I'm pretty sure I've seen comments blend in completely at about the -50 mark.
I don't have a link offhand though.

~~~
tlrobinson
I actually find the lightening of the text attracts me to it. I'm always
curious to see what made a comment so controversial / bad.

