I am from the field (consulting partner). From the field it takes a lot more then Benioff to simply change the marketing materials (yet again) to become a platform company.

Yes, SFDC is a billon dollar company (by a small margin), but that billon dollar tagline comes from smaller companies (~ 20 seats per client) and to think that makes you capable of enterprise is just crazy (where are the analyst?). Again in the field the cracks are showing on most enterprise deployments .

Benioff has a very weak team (from an enterprise view) and from all reports he is still the "single point" of decision making (enterprise ready, not).

Given salesforce's inability to establish a partner channel and commercials to support a move away from SaaS CRM, salesforce.com is still only a CRM provider.

Benioff take some advice, develop a platform strategy that enables leverage from partners before it’s too late. Regardless of what comes out of salesforce.com’s PR machine, the facts are 1) Microsoft is gaining ground on cloud and 2) Oracle/Siebel CRM on-demand is starting to eat salesforce.com’s lunch.
I know this comment isn’t along the standard lines of Benioff the ‘super hero’, but like the rest of the economy it’s time to discuss some facts. I am total amazed at the level of incorrect analysis on this company.

Salesforce.com may very well miss the cloud opportunity.

Hey Boss, is that you?

You sit in your office all day long (except for the 2 hour lunch or after the 3 PM departure) talking about how hard you're working "in the field".

When you need a break from talking about your extraordinary efforts in your office, you come do it in mine. I removed the extra chair but you seem quite comfortable delivering your monologues sitting on the desk outside the door.

You are always a bit surprised when the client is frustrated about having to buy yet another software license because #16 'The enterprise data connector widget' was missing from the list of 40 we gave them. And yes, of course, it costs extra. Oh, and yes, they will need yet another server.

We beg for larger development and testing hardware because the crushing weight of SharePoint software constantly crashes our machines, often destroying hours of hard work only to hear "just reboot duh"

The irony of your title and position serve well to put life in perspective, which keeps the smiles on our faces and LOL'ing on IM.

You're always surprised clients' requirements change through the course of a project & 'you know' agile development is 'just dumb'

Of course you're not fooled by salesforce.com's PR machine yet 'Microsoft is gaining in the cloud'

You are not "in the field". You're in the way.

Force.com, Google Apps, and others offer the potential for millions of creative people to develop (for free) Line of Business applications by the hundreds of thousands. You think the global economy has benefited from Facebook's ads about dating sites and running lame 'you've been poked' apps? Now WE have our hands on accounting, supply chain, project management, workflow, learning management, everything. WE can be anyone and live anywhere - no massive server, expensive software, or top of line computer required. You think companies are connected to their customers now? You haven't seen anything yet. "Facebook friends", jeez who cares (Microsoft, just buy it already and put it out of its misery) now mashup ALL of your LOB apps with your customers' apps, regardless of size (your's or their's!!!) - collaboration and workflow are more than posting Word docs to a shared site or firing off a notification email. Industry mastered the physical world and great wealth was created. The mass collaboration of minds will have a more profound impact on our global society than 1000 Industrial Revolutions. Atlas can do much more than just bear the load.

salesforce.com didn't miss the cloud opportunity, the game's already over. The winners are clear.

That's a great point. We're standardized on Microsoft. We had a question about licensing, put a call into Redmond and got everything cleared up...