Salesforce.com executive believes tough economy makes users look at new solutions to old problems
News | 23 Nov 2009 :
The recession is driving companies to look into new technologies such as cloud computing, according to an executive from Salesforce.com.
During an interview at Dreamforce in San Francisco Andy Jacques, Salesforce's vice president for North Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said the economic climate is making businesses seek out new solutions for their infrastructure problems.
"There is a big focus on budgets and a big focus on what people are spending their money on," he said.
"Customers have their stagnant systems with no innovations. The SAPs and Oracles of the world are just ensuring that [their products] are backwardly compatible but the state of the economy is driving people to look for something else."
Jacques claimed his company didn't see any barriers to the adoption of cloud computing but accepted that there was still a way to go to convince everyone else.
"We are seen as the leader in cloud so we are watched very closely," he said. "There is a responsibility on our shoulders to prove that the model works every day."
"Without a doubt we are still in the early days... and we can't present revolutionary [products] without there being a lot of changes," he said. "This means there will be questions from customers for a long time to come."
Even with this in mind, he was still convinced that cloud computing is the future and the technology will see off the days of the on-premises data centre.
"The whole industry is shifting to cloud computing," he claimed. "I mean there are still mainframes out there so for some time there will be on premises solutions but the days where people are interested in just these and going out to spend money on them.... those days are coming to end."