Here we are at the opening for Sugar CRM’s Sugarcon event. The theme is openness and the social world.
This is a defining event for Sugar as the service is moving deeper into the enterprise with IBM as a partner. IBM is investing heavily in Sugar CRM. A total of six IBM vice presidents are here for the event.
Let’s get started.
9:15 a.m.: CEO Larry Augustin is setting the tone. He is now talking about what was hot in 2006. MySpace, Slashdot and Digg were all the talk. Kevin Rose was on the cover of Business Week. In that day,facbook was hardly on the radar. Twitter was just getting started.
9:23 a.m.: Going through the numbers, which we went through in yesterday’s post. Sugar is deepening its focus on its partner network. Again, that’s where IBM comes into play as a partner.
9:26 a.m: Nice to see Doc Searls here. His tweet: “I’ve been hanging with @pgreenbe for years, but now for the first time in physical space, in the front row at #scon11 in SF #crm #scrm #vrm
9:30a.m.: Global. mobile, social and platform are the mainstays of Sugar 6. As a platform, Sugar will continue to develop the platform for building out custom solutions.
9:32: It’s demo time! To set the stage, Clint Orem is setting up an imaginary situation. Sugar 6 has an offline client mode for Android, Blackberry and the iPhone. It includes the addition of seven new languages, bringing total to 22. We’re looking at the activity streams and how you can access accounts. Oren is showing InsideView and the integration with IBM LotusLive. He is showing how LotusLive and Google Docs can be sued to collaborate on a sales proposal.
9:40 a.m.:Showing a sales funnel with HTML 5 charting and the update in the activity stream that shows a sale closing. That’s an example of how events are documented in the activity stream updates. Finishing up with Augustin and Orem and now on to SeanPoully, vice president, IBM, who runs the social business initiatives.
9:46 a.m.: Poully says IBM defined the category for social business and is the leader in the category. IBM sees it as a $100 billion opportunity. Seeing a video about Cemex and its work with IBM.Cemex has 17,000 employees in the network. What is driving interest from companies like Cemex? For IBM, it’s about an instrumented, interconnected and intelligent world. There will be more smartphones shipped in 2012 than PCs. With it is an explosion of information. The disruptions lead to the need for social business.
9:54 a.m.: Two broad areas are there for companies. One is to create an exceptional experience and a community within the company. Poully is following by talking about control and the need for it. APIs are broadly integrated across the IBM social business environment for integration across all aspects of the organization, including logistics, communications and operations. Now we’re watching another video about Signature Mortgage with executive taking about social business.
10:04 a.m.: Why is the relationship a strong one between IBM and Sugar CRM? It’s about on-premise and the cloud – the hybrid model. That’s key. IBM is deeply invested in on-premise.
10:06 a.m.: Paul Greenberg is on stage. Greenberg is a CRM expert – very well-respected in the market. Augustin is asking Greenberg – why si social hot right now? Greenberg says people can communicate according to their similarities and you now have the ability to continuously communicate with smartphones and other devices. The key is the scale of it all. It is everywhere. It is every institution that you can imagine. You can change business, you can change elections – you can change anything. A lot of this i about speed and how fast customers can respond. And just as powerful, how fast a business can respond to customers. It speeds the pace at which a relationship deepens between the business and the customer.
10:15 a.m.: Greenberg says anyone who does not do social inside and outside the company is stupid. Greenberg is responding to question by Augustin about the fear people have about social. It’s about change. The difference is people are aware of the change that is happening. Very few companies are transforming to a social business. They are not even doing the small, tactical changes. Poully says at IBM that social started with IBM CEO Sam Palmisano. He saw his kids using Facebook and wanted to know about it. That turned into a social business strategy. IBM started deploying it and found that connections were being made in an instant with peo[le from different parts of the world in an organization of 400,000 people in size.
10:24 a.m.: Augustin asks: When is it too invasive with customers? When does it get creepy? Greenberg says if you don’t want it to be known, don’t write it. He is talkign about Facebook and its riches is in the social profiles. That is the exchange you make with Facebook. You give up your profile. That is it. Poully says there is a balance. Facebook is an example of how deep the issues are about privacy. But when you start getting into business, there are things you may not want to share. You can’t completely control what people share but you need to help them understand the policy. Privacy is not thought about. That’s why the policy is important.
10:32 a.m.: Last thoughts. Greenberg says the communication revolution will continue. It will still be a communications revolution in five years. Poully says embrace social. Give it a try.
10:46 a.m. In an interview with Poully. He sys Sugar has the potential to run in the larger, enterprise space. Salesforce does not inherent the mantle necessarily from a company such as Siebel. But is the architecture ready? The only time you know is when you put it into action. IBM sees opportunity with the data. A solution that needs more horsepower is a good thing. IBM is equally interested in going the other way with smaller companies, too. IBM sees more then opportunities around the collaboration such as with analytics and Cognos. Sentiment analysis, predictive analytics are all potential opportunities.
10:54 a.m.: From a business point of view – analytics on who knows what is immensely valuable. Analytics on the things people do and say allows IBM to find experts within a company. A lot of what we are talking about is the need to find the needle in the haystack. But what about fast data? Now we have the ability to understand unstructured data. And what does it mean? Lots to explore. The questions though, are not the things that people think about. People need to get their work done. They are not thinking about analytics. They will migrate to the services that help them get their work done faster and doesn’t require a lot of change.
2:22 p.m.: I’m in the press room, starting to belt out a new post. Come by and visit if you want to chat.
