Is Salesforce.com’s glass for SMBs half full (of lemonade)  or half empty?  I borrowed the lemonade metaphor from Venturebeat’s post announcing Salesforce.com’s new Contact Manager offering for (very) small businesses.

On second thought we should use orange juice as a metaphor – as in disappearing orange juice, by Tropicana which offers less juice in a redesigned pitcher for the same price, and even tries to sell it as a benefit to consumers

Salesforce.com “pulled a Tropicana” with the announcement of their $9 Contact Management edition, and the funny thing is, nobody seems to have noticed it. No, the media duly buys what Salesforce.com PR sells, welcoming the new edition as “giving something back to the little guy” , “breaking through a price barrier”, “making it affordable for SMBs to get in the Cloud”.

Nobody bothered to do some fact-checking, which would have unveiled that in the new Edition is in fact offering less for the same price, a’la Tropicana.  Salesforce.com has pulled off a price increase and it went largely unnoticed.

Prior to this announcement the lowest-priced edition of Salesforce CRM, the Group Edition was priced at $9 per user per month, and it is now increased to $35.   The few media outlets that noticed this refer to it as temporary promotion for August, that has now expired.   Let’s see just how temporary it was: the “promo” started not in August but in June, and not in 2009, but 2008.

This promotion was supposed to expire in July of last year, but it did not – and I correctly predicted it would transition into a permanent price-cut, without much fanfare.  Indeed the $9 pricing lasted over a year.  And just for the record, prior to dropping the price to $9, CRM Group Edition had cost $20 – so the $35 new price is definitely not just ending a promotion, it’s a price hike of several notches.

But forget history, let’s look at value: having a Contact Manager functionality is certainly useful, although I suspect Google Apps (which is integrated with this Salesforce.com offering) will also offer enhanced Contacts functions.   Still, nice – for 2 users only, as that’s the maximum number  allowed for this edition.  Talk about 2-person companies, let’s remember that Salesforce.com used to offer a free single-user Personal Edition CRM.  I’ve just checked my dormant account, it’s still working – but the offering is no longer available for new users.

So let’s see: from free CRM for one user, later $9 CRM up to five users, we’ve gone to $9 Contact Manager for two users.  Quite an improvement.

Now if you have 3 users, the lowest entry point to Salesforce.com is now Group Edition at $35 per person = $105 vs. the previous price of $27.   And if you have 6 users, you no longer qualify for Group Edition, your entry point now is Professional Edition at $65 per user.

Oh, well.  Math lesson over, it’s a nice sunny morning, time for my glass of OJ ( not half full, not half empty – just full.)

(Disclosure: I’m Editor of CloudAve, a group blog sponsored by Zoho.  This article is cross-posted there.)

What’s wrong with this banner?  Nothing – unless you place it in context. It appeared just days after Hurricane Katrina almost wiped out New Orleans… which gives the words “where anything can happen” a special meaning.  And if you think it was just an innocent mistake, read the details here.

Related posts:

• Southern Comfort Pours Entire Media Budget Into Digital
• Southern Comfort Dumps Cable For Hulu, Facebook
• SoCo and Lime, and Facebook, and Hulu…
• Southern Comfort goes all in on web advertising

Why risky?  Because ..well, cardboard is indeed the first word that comes to mind when I taste it.  Oh, well, my Dad likes it.  Lucky for him, since he needs it for health: it’s hard to find this much fiber in half a cup of breakfast cereal elsewhere.  I assume that’s the reason for this product’s popularity, not taste…but wait, building on the base product’s success, there is now a whole range of Fiber One products, cereals, breakfast bars..etc.

They went mainstream. Translation: sweet, tasty, sugary, less healthy.  From 57% of your recommended daily fiber intake down to 20% in some cases.  But wait.. there’s one cereal likely a lot tastier and not that far from the original fiber content:

Forget the standard industry trick that the new box contains only 14.25 ounces instead of the original 16.2 for the same price… it’s almost as healthy and likely tastes better. Let’s check the small print:

At first glance the two products are close: 14g vs. 13g fiber.  But how come the tastier version is listed with 42g Carbs while the original had only 25?   And 160 Calories vs. 60?

Oh, there’s the trick: the ingredients are listed as per serving. However, the original serving size was half a cup, while the tastier Honey Clusters’ serving size is 1 cup.   I repeat:

General Mills, makers of Fiber One is using (almost) double the serving size to compare fiber content.  The true comparison would be on the same serving basis, which would show  a drop from 51% fiber content to roughly 25%.

This is an outrage: while technically correct, it gives false impression, especially since these products are typically placed right next to each other on supermarket shelves – and on the company’s website, for that matter.

Shame on you, General Mills for treating us as if we were stupid.

Image via Wikipedia

The University of Salford in Manchaster will offer a Masters degree in Social Media, focusing on Facebook and Twitter.

Salford claims to be the world’s first to offer a Masters course in social media, but they are not.  That title goes to Birmingham City University which announced their one-year course in Social Media in March. For a cool £4,400 ($7,200) you get a Master’s Degree of … well, let’s just say questionable value. 

Continue reading…

In fact it will be more than a second chance: while the UtR event focused specifically on Cloud Computing, Launch 2009 is designed to uncover and showcase products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, security, digital media next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy. The inaugural Launch event was in 2006, combined with Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start conference.

Are these events worth attending? It’s your call … all I can say is since 2006 presenting startups received a combined $80+ million in venture funding.

So if you are building the Next Great Business in the areas mentioned above, are (almost) ready for launch, meaning that by June 9th, 2009 you will have a product or service available, but have not been out in the marketplace for more than a few months, then by all means send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org. Submission deadline: May 8th, 2009 – yes, just a few days left. (Garage Technology offers a useful Writing a Compelling Executive Summary guide.)

Last year over 300 companies from all around the country and even overseas applied, so clearly the presentation spots are in high demand. Based on the submissions up to 30 companies will be invited to present at the Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 event on June 9th at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, California. Presentations slots are 10 minutes, running in 6 sessions of 5 companies each. Each presenting team will also be assigned a cocktail table in the Networking Room where they can meet with interested audience members one-on-one to answer questions and explore possibilities.

The evening before, on June 8th the presenting companies, registered audience and selected bloggers and media will be invited to a Pre-Event Party at a prestigious location in Palo Alto, providing a further opportunity for networking with Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers.

So if you are a qualifying startup Founder, remember the deadline: May 8th.  For additional details and later for updates check http://www.launchsiliconvalley.org/ and you may also want to follow the event (actually the President of SVASE) on Twitter.

Guy Kawasaki called Launch: Silicon Valley “the poor man’s Demo”. SVASE proudly wears that badge, since this is an event with a price tag that won’t keep any startups away. It’s your turn now: send in the Executive Summary and launch with SVASE in June.

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

So I decided to put my money (well, a little) where my mouth is and have just purchased 10 5-person  licences of Confluence, the market leading enterprise wiki.  Not that I can use them all – so I will find a way to give them away in the future.

If you want to help them donate $100K to Room to Read, you can do your part easily … and just as a reminder, you’re buying a $1,200 licence for $5.   What a bargain to close out the week.

Update: With 3 hours to go Atlassian is just $2.5K short of reaching the target.  See coverage map at Mike’s blog.

Update #2: Ah, the drama of the last minutes:

$640 short of $100k… with 20 minutes to go, my maths says we’re just going to miss!
$590 short. Need $30/minute now… at least we did $35 last minute!
Just tipped $99,510… I wonder if we should just leave it up for 10 minutes extra, or does that seem dodgy?
Well… computer says it’s…over $100k!!
Woo! Woo!!! Dancin’ around the room. Atlassian Stimulus Package 400% of $25k goal. What a week. Simply staggering. THANK YOU EVERYBODY!
Atlassian Stimulus Package (preliminary) final total – $100,350 for Room To Read in 120 hours from 7284 _awesome_ startups and teams!!

This week we’re also seeing a for-profit company, Atlassian drive to raise $100,000K for the benefit of Room to Read, an organization that builds schools, libraries in rural communities in Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Zambia …etc.  Doing good is in Atlassian’s DNA, likely coming from the co-Founder, who is a major Kiva Supporter.  His company had set up the Atlassian Foundation which donates basically 1% of everything:

• 1% of company and employee time to Foundation projects
• 1% of company equity to the Foundation
• 1% of our products to non-profit groups

But wait!  This isn’t a post about charity only.  There’s a Deal in it for you!

The Atlassian $timulus package is a 5-day drive, during which you can get either Confluence, the excellent Enterprise Wiki, or Jira, the issue tracker – Atlassian’s first product that’s still an IT favourite  for $5 for 5 users.

Now I hear you ask: is that $5 per person per month?  That would by typical (actually low) pricing for most SaaS offerings.   NO!  It is:

• A five-user licence (ie. $1 per person)
• For a full year
• For the full-featured entrerprise strenght products

My only regret is that it does not involve the hosted versions of these products.   But if it’s the downloadable, installable version, what’s this per year licence?  Most enterprise software is sold with a perpetual licence: you can use it forever.  But then the vendor pushes the (almost) mandatory maintenance fees to the tune of 20-25%, and major new releases every 4-5 years.

Atlassian does not play such games, their philosophy is transparency and simplicity. Software should be easy to learn, easy to use and easy to buy.  Hence the annual licence whish involves support. (Update: I misunderstood this part: the licence is a perpetual one, the additioal annual fees are for maintenance / support, and the are optional.)  And for comparison, the minimum annual licence for both Confluence and Jira is $1,200.

So Atlassian is essentially giving away $1,200 licences for free – but it’s actually a lot more.  This isn’t just your introductory price.  Customers who purchase during the $timulus week (only two days left) are locked in to their $1 per user price for the lifetime of the product, and those fees will be donated as well.   That goes way beyond giving up revenue – they can’t possibly provide support for $1 a year, so Atlassian is reaching into their pockets big time for years to come.

The initiative appears to be more wildly popular than they expected. The initial goal was to raise $25,000 for Room to Read, and they exceeded that target on the first day – hence the new objective of $100,000K.

Early this morning they were at 66% of the increased target:

Now, before someone thinks I am doing a paid commercial here: I am not receiving any form of compensation or incentive from Atlassian.  I simply like what they are doing.  A lot.

But I’m not naive.  This isn’t just charity.  It’s damned good marketing – in more ways then one.  First, as you may suspect is Brand recognition.

The second is perhaps less obvious: Atlassian’s initial product, Jira took several years to take off – the second, Confluence had much faster growth.  Part of their secret sauce has always been relying on a very loyal, very satisfied customer base, mostly IT-types who buy additional products from their trusted vendor.

So yes, Atlassian is seeding their market with thousands of free customers this week.  Which is fine, I’ve said before: you don’t have to be purely altruistic to do good.

Update: The Atlassian $timulus Package is now listed in Consumerist’s Morning Deals, along with Blu-Ray Discs and Casio Cameras

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

If it’s named a conference, it has to have a keynote or a panel, and that’s what you get at 9am: the Buyers’ Wish-list Panel:

• What are technology buyers are hunting for?
• What cloud technologies have they adopted?
• How you can get on their wish list?

But that’s where all similarity to a conference ends.  The rest of UtR is actually a giant Startup Launchpad – the American Idol of startups.  Except UtR won’t take months to declare the winners.  The finalists present in a rapid-fire format  – they are grouped in categories of 4 each, in two parallel tracks  and each presenter has about 15 minutes. They get grilled by the judges and audience, then all attendees get to vote  ( I wonder if they upgraded from paper ballots to SMS yet..) and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced.

UtR has a good track record of the participants getting funded – about half of them got funded or acquired in the past. (See more stats here.)  If we can believe InformationWeek’s Top 50 Startup list, this year’s roster will also be worth paying attention to:

Then there are the Graduate Circle Companies – fomer UtR presenters, who are no longer truly “under the radar”, having proven themselves:

So if you want to be part of 2009 startup history, network with entrepreneurs, VC’s, media, corporate decisionmakers, join us on Friday.   CloudAve is a media partner for this event, several of us (Krish, Graeme, Raju and myself) will be there, and most importantly, we have a deal for you.  Use our VIP registration site for $100 off the non-member price.

If you can’t commit full day, drop by just for the afternoon (it’s Friday).  For the first time in the history of these events, you can now get an after-lunch pass for $275.

See you there!

(Note to PR types: thanks for all your interest, but I am not making advance appointments.  UtR is too vibrant, dynamic, there are too many interesting people to bump into to make such commitments – better go with the flow.  But it’s a small place, and several of us from CloudAve will be there, so I’m sure we’ll meet your startup clients anyway.)

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

I’m discussing the above and more using Zumodrive’s launch as case study over @ CloudAve – read the details here.