SuccessFactors Deal: More Little Googzilla Steps to the Enterprise
August 5, 2008
On my fun filled ride back from the sublime beauty of central Illinois, I had some time to think about Google and its enterprise ambitions. Dave Girouard, the wizard who runs this unit, looks like a movie star. He’s Googley, which most people forget. I don’t think a company with a stake in the enterprise market should underestimate Google or Mr. Girouard.
A recent example is Google’s deal with SuccessFactors. No, this is not the Dale Carnegie formula about knowing the prospect’s wife’s dog’s favorite snack. This SuccessFactors has about four million users worldwide for its performance management software. Like Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors in a cloud service, and it is a serious cumulus not the toothless mammatus that IBM’s cloud initiative invokes for me. You can read more about SuccessFactors here.
Network World has a good story about this Google – SuccessFactors tie up. Chris Kanaracus’ article is “SuccessFactors Integrates with Google Apps. You can read it here. The company has not focused on one or two Google applications. SuccessFactors has integrated:
- Google Talk
- Google Calendar
- Google Docs
- Google Book Search
- Google Maps.
The write up on the SuccessFactors’ Web site is at http://www.successfactors.com/google/.
Why is this important?
The complexity of on premises installations is rising. If you were starting your own company today, would you use your cash for servers, IT professionals, and big money software? Or, would you use cloud services and apply your cash and personnel resources to your core business? Unless you are in the information technology business, the cloud services make a great deal of sense.
I met with a young person working on a business plan as part of her MBA. I was amused to see that the company’s IT infrastructure was in the cloud.
The Google is working through Googley partners to seep into organizations. Other Google tie ups are designed to piggy back on an another company’s sales and customer support infrastructure.
This is an attack based on the strategy of allowing Roman soldiers to marry women in a country that Rome just beat in war. Rome became part of the natural course of events in that territory. Slowly, the territory was Roman. The strategy ran out of gas in the 4th century, but that’s plenty of time for most rulers.
Google is playing the same marry-and-conquer game. Their partners are thrilled and flattered. Suddenly the partners are Googley. And the progeny? Well, that’s going to be a problem for IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle in the future.
Stephen Arnold, August 5, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
