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    Sunday, June 21, 2009

    Reuters - Salesforce CEO jabs at Microsoft cloud moves

    This article was sent to you from bombastic4000@yahoo.com, who uses Reuters Mobile Site to get news and information on the go. To access Reuters on your mobile phone, go to:
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    Salesforce CEO jabs at Microsoft cloud moves

    Thursday, Jun 18, 2009 10:57PM UTC

    By Bill Rigby

    SEATTLE (Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc's outspoken chief executive took a few jabs at Microsoft Corp's lumbering efforts to build up its "cloud computing" services on Thursday, on a visit to the world's largest software company's home town.

    Marc Benioff, a former Oracle Corp employee who founded Salesforce.com 10 years ago, rarely misses a chance to bash Microsoft as he spreads his gospel of cutting out software installed on users' computers and getting companies to use applications over the web.

    "We are all about no software and they are all about software," Benioff said at a lunch in Seattle, when asked about Microsoft. "We are all about creating a whole new movement of cloud computing to move companies away from Microsoft's proprietary technology and monopolistic business practices."

    Salesforce, with a "Ghostbusters"-style logo with the word "software" in a red, barred circle, is not an immediate threat to Microsoft. The San Francisco-based company had just over $1 billion in revenue last fiscal year, compared to Microsoft's $60 billion.

    But the smaller company has crept onto Microsoft's radar as it attracts more companies to run business applications over the web, saving money on software, servers and IT administration.

    In doing so, Salesforce has put itself at the forefront of the broad phenomenon known as cloud computing, or selling software as a service. Microsoft -- led by chief software architect Ray Ozzie -- is moving in the same direction, the company says, but little has actually changed in its product line-up.

    "I'm a huge fan of Ray Ozzie, but I know how hard it is to operate within the culture of Microsoft," said Benioff. "That's why you really haven't seen them deliver any breaking technology in this area yet, even though they've been talking about it for many years."

    Microsoft has been investing heavily in date storage centers and is expected to roll-out its "Azure" platform for cloud-based applications later this year. But Benioff was skeptical.

    "I call it Azune, because it's got the same opportunities," Benioff joked, referring to Microsoft's relatively unpopular Zune digital music player.

    Benioff did not offer any hopes for a quick recovery from the recession, but said his company was controlling costs and customers were adapting to conditions.

    "Customers are starting to get their sea-legs, learning how to operate in this environment," he said.

    (Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing Bernard Orr)

    Reuters - Streaming music service Spotify basks in praise

    This article was sent to you from bombastic4000@yahoo.com, who uses Reuters Mobile Site to get news and information on the go. To access Reuters on your mobile phone, go to:
    http://mobile.reuters.com

    Streaming music service Spotify basks in praise

    Sunday, Jun 21, 2009 3:26AM UTC

    By Antony Bruno

    DENVER (Billboard) - At first glance, Spotify isn't much different from other on-demand streaming music services. It includes roughly the same library of songs, pays the same per-stream licensing fees for music and contends with the same poor ad-sales environment.

    Usage is respectable but not overwhelming, with about 3 million users in the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France. The "vast majority" of them skip Spotify's monthly ad-free subscription option and use the service for free, according to co-founder/CEO Daniel Ek.

    Yet while the media routinely skewers similar services like MySpace Music, Last.fm and even Rhapsody and Napster for their shaky business models and usability concerns, Spotify has been heaped with praise.

    So far, U.S. music fans can only read about the much-hyped service, as it isn't yet available domestically. But as the company prepares to launch the service stateside before the end of the year, let's examine why Spotify has been anointed the iTunes of streaming music.

    Compared with its competitors in the subscription and ad-funded spaces, Spotify is a simple, even basic, application, consisting of a search bar, media player, playlist builder and music management tools.

    "What instinctively looks like it should be a failing is actually its core strength," Forrester music analyst Mark Mulligan says. "It doesn't have the discovery, search and community functionality that we've come to expect from the streaming services. But that's why it just works. The reason iTunes was so successful comparative to other download stores was because it's so easy to use. Spotify works on that same level."

    Moreover, the service's simplicity hides a slick technology that uses a mix of cached streaming and peer-to-peer distribution that results in real-time playback speeds free of the buffering delays of other music services. And rather than billing itself as a music service -- and thereby burden itself with expectations of the usual discovery, recommendation and community bells and whistles that come with such a distinction -- the company positions itself as a music management system. It's a subtle distinction, but one that seems to have made a difference with consumers.

    "People don't manage their music with the online services that are out there today," Ek says. "They manage it with iTunes. What's different about Spotify is that users manage their music with Spotify instead. They don't perceive what they're doing as streaming music online. They perceive it as they have all the world's music on their hard drive and can play it whenever they want. That's the kind of fundamental difference we offer."

    Also critical to Spotify's success so far has been its ability to recruit as allies key influencers in the press and blogosphere. Following its beta launch last year in Europe, the company sent invitations to analysts, journalists and bloggers. Each recipient was allowed to invite seven other people to the service, with the same privilege extended to each of those people and so on. The result was a frenzy of online news coverage and rave reviews.

    But replicating that success in the United States will be a tall order. For starters, there are entrenched competitors stateside in the ad-funded and pay-per-month camps with better name recognition among music fans and advertisers. And even if Spotify attracts a critical mass of users, its streaming music costs could skyrocket in this country faster than its ability to pay for them.

    "The costs are going to be an order of magnitude higher than they have at the moment, and their cash burn rate is going to accelerate," Mulligan says. "So the question is: Can they afford to be successful in the U.S.?"

    Ek says the company has enough cash and venture capital investments to last 18 months. But it will have to dramatically ramp up the number of paid monthly users to ensure its long-term viability.

    The company is placing its bet on mobile platforms as the key to that upsell, having already developed a downloadable Android application and preparing the launch of an iPhone app as well. Ek says that only paying users will have access to the mobile apps. It's also seeking to monetize paid downloads through a partnership with the European digital retailer We7 and is dabbling in ticket and merch sales.

    Challenges aside, Spotify's short but notable record of success has sparked optimism that it might have the right mix of elegant technology and savvy marketing that made another digital music service thrive in a market full of entrenched competitors.

    "If Spotify can convert a large share of consumers -- in the tens of millions -- to streaming," Mulligan says, "this might be a killer app in the way iTunes was a killer app."

    (Editing by Dean Gooodman at Reuters)

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    If you know me then you know my name. I am The Black Rider and the world is my Flame. The rider writes, observes, creates, produces, and learns the world around him. Ride on. Ride on!

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