If you don’t follow salesforce.com closely, it’s probably because you’re not currently a user. That will probably change pretty soon. Investors in old technologies are getting worried, with Kaufman Brothers issuing a "Sell" rating on Accenture for that very reason. Cloud computing and SaaS (salesforce.com especially) are taking a significant bite out of the old giants.

On June 22 out in San Jose, salesforce.com is hosting a huge event called Cloudforce (which we’re sponsoring), where they will be unveiling the next nail in old-technology’s coffin: Salesforce Chatter. So why mention the investment worry over the old world of technology players?

Simple: the old guys just don’t get it.

There is an enormous revolution going on, and pretty much every person is taking part in it. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. The social connections between individuals have exploded, and mobile access to these systems lets us plug in to those connections anywhere.

With Chatter, salesforce.com is now making the enterprise social. Everything you know and love about social media is now coming to your company, but only if you’re a salesforce.com user. Nobody else is doing this, and investors are paying attention and putting their money where their mouth is.

Salesforce has been on an absolute rocket ride, and that is showing no signs of changing any time soon. Maybe it’s about time you join the social revolution too.

One of my favorite parts of being a marketer is how naturally social and outgoing the marketing lot tends to be. It’s why we in particular take to social media so easily. There are a lot of mediums out there, but thankfully there are a few great tools to make it all a bit more manageable. Below are a few of my favorites, grouped into categories.

Twitter Management

Hootsuite: the definitive package for managing your corporate and personall Twitter accounts. Users can add, update, and monitor multiple Twitter accounts (and now, even Facebook) from a single browser window. Hootsuite makes managing a corporate Twitter account easy by granting access to as many (or as few) people as you’d like.

Since Twitter is limited to 140 character updates, you have to make the most of each character. Hootsuite features a built-in URL shortener which also tracks clickthroughs for you, no matter where you post them.

Don’t have time to update Twitter all day? No problem. Hootsuite lets you schedule tweets in advance, so you can continually update your feed with things your followers find useful.

In addition to their website, Hootsuite also has a desktop application and a new iPhone app.

Social Media News

Mashable: without a doubt the best source for Social Media news on the Internet. It’s updated constantly by a number of bloggers and is a treasure chest of information.

Mashable covers Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, mobile, and anything else social/techy that you can imagine. It’s easy to navigate and the articles are all written with the modern attention span in mind. Get in, get your info, get out. Awesome.

Digg: the original (and still the best) social networking and news site. The concept is simple - users submit stories, and other users either digg a story up or bury it. The cream rises to the top. Hate mainstream media? Here’s your reprieve.

When I’m looking for content that tends to be cutting edge or obscure, I usually check with Digg. Of course there’s trolls and fanboys, but those are easy enough to avoid.

 Podcasts

Marketing Over Coffee. Yeah, their logo sucks - who cares?? This weekly podcast by Christopher Penn and John Wall is witty, humorous, and full of can’t-miss content for marketers.

Each week they bring you best practices for both B2B and B2C marketers, covering covering everything from SEO/SEM to social media monitoring and marketing. If you’re looking for a place to learn how to make nice mailers this is not it.

These guys are all about metrics and measurements. If you can’t measure the lift, they’re not interested and neither should you be.

 
This Week in Tech. Leo Laporte is an old-school broadcaster with plenty of new-school ideas. He was one of the very first to eschew traditional terrestrial radio and move into podcasting. I believe this show began in 2006, so you know he’s way ahead of the curve.

Each weekly installment is about an hour long and brings me up to speed on the week’s updates in technology, both consumer and enterprise. If you are a marketer you absolutely, positively cannot let technology pass you by. This is a good arrow to have in the quiver.

 These are just a few of my favorites. Got some of your own that you’d like to add? I’d love to see them in the comments.

Today, Marc Benioff, the ever-vocal CEO of salesforce.com made a blog post over at Fortune on the end of Microsoft. In his post he outlines Microsoft’s latest ad campaigns, the ones spouting off about Windows 7 being "my idea." He pokes fun at one in particular where Windows no longer crashing was somehow deemed a feature.

Is that how low our expectations are these days? Certainly not in general, and it is a sad state of affairs for Microsoft that crashing is one of the expected behaviors of a Windows device.

He goes on further to point out the explosive growth and success of sites like Facebook and YouTube. These consumer websites have absolutely changed people’s expectations of what a web experience should be like: engaging, easy to navigate and providing loads of value.

Here at Model Metrics those themes ring true for everything we build. We do nothing but cloud computing, which is really what Facebook and YouTube are all about. Computing in the workplace has historically lagged behind what’s available at home. That’s no longer true. With technology from salesforce.com, Google, Adobe and Apple getting things done at the office is as easy as using your favorite personal websites.

While Microsoft isn’t leaving any time soon, newer technologies are showing better promise than the failed paradigm of machines prone to crashing.

At long last, the oft-rumored VMForce has been officially announced.

Huh?

VMForce is a technology brought about by a partnership between salesforce.com and VMware,     the leader in virtualization technology. VMForce enables Java applications to run on Force.com infrastructure, the robust development platform built by the folks at salesforce.com.

What does all of that mean?

Java is one of the most widely used development languages in the world. It is a mature technology with millions of active developers, with more applications running than can likely be counted. With VMForce, many of those applications can now be migrated easily to run in the cloud.

These applications will then be available anywhere, on almost any device. They are instantly social, searchable, and scalable. And since they’re on Force.com, you get great security and visibility into uptime.

Salesforce chatter has been gaining market buzz over the past month or so, especially after salesforce.com’s CEO, Marc Benioff posted a guest blog on TechCrunch on what he calls the "Facebook Imperative." His point wasn’t just to get people talking about his own social platform, but to make people realize just how far technology has come in the past 10 years.

Salesforce has always set out to make enterprise applications (the stuff you use at work) as easy to use as the applications and websites you use at home. Salesforce Chatter is going to do for the workplace what Facebook has done for personal communications. Things will move much more quickly and relationships will grow.

The ability to update your co-workers enmasse without spamming them and filling their already overfull inboxes represents the biggest difference between push and pull communications. Salesforce claims that since rolling out Chatter internally their email volume dropped by 40%. Imagine how much time that would save you in a given day! 

Got an interest in cloud computing? Wondering what all the hype is about? Listen in to CloudCast, a weekly podcast running anywhere from a half hour to 45 minutes. We meander a bit from enterprise applications to consumer applications, but if you’ve ever wanted to get the inside story on what’s hot, find it here in iTunes.

EDIT: The standard RSS link is here - http://www.modelmetrics.com/cloudcast.xml

According to John Herlihy, Google’s vice-president of Global Ad Operations, the conventional desktop PC is rapidly becoming irrelevant. Between the explosive sales of smart phones and other mobile devices, netbooks, and laptops it appears the "traditional" means of computing are changing quickly.

Google of course has a vested interest in this game, but it’s clear they have a point. The power of the PC is moving to the cloud for all of the heavy lifting. Buying ever more powerful equipment is simply unnecessary. The enterprise can do much of its computing in the cloud, and with Apple’s latest moves the consumer will soon find media there as well.

So now that the cloud is fully established for both consumers and enterprises alike, it’s just a matter of time before the old desktop PC goes the way of the dinosaur.

I hate cloud computing. There, I said it. OK, maybe it’s not cloud computing I hate, it’s the buzz and hype associated with the term.

Whenever a technology acquires a sexy new term, companies that have nothing to do with it use the term in order to be associated with being hip or cool. This concept is on painful exhibit with HD Sunglasses. You mean to tell me I’ve been seeing everything in VHS-quality my whole life and all I needed was sunglasses to get my 1080p? Ridiculous, right?

And just like that, a term that used to have meaning becomes diluted, and people who aren’t early adopters become disillusioned.

Gartner has recognized this trend with cloud computing, calling the hype "deafening." This is a real problem for IT and business professionals alike who want to learn what cloud computing is and what it can do for their business. The problem is in the signal to noise ratio. Too much BS, not enough substance.

My message to people who are legitimately trying to learn is this: as someone whose career has always been in tech, cloud computing is very real. Organizations who do not embrace the technology are going to get steamrolled by those who do. If you’re not moving forward you’re getting passed - that is the way of business.

Cloud computing is by and large cheaper than on-premise applications, adapts more quickly to the needs of your business, and is far more extensible than traditional apps. It is not the answer for everything, but it can make your business much more nimble.

On the heels of my Top Cloud Computing Stories of 2009 comes (appropriately enough) my Top 5 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2010. Let’s jump right into it.

1) There Will be Another Outage, and No One Will Panic
In 2009 there were two significant outages of Google’s Gmail service, which rendered it unavailable temporarily. The most interesting part of the story is that the outages are so rare that they were deemed newsworthy by the mainstream media. In 2010 there will likely be an outage of another major Cloud Computing vendor, and the reactions in the media will be the same. It will be covered broadly for 2 reasons:

• Outages are very rare
• Critics and IT luddites are looking for a story to keep the business side off of their backs

Either way, vendors have their best and brightest working to ensure that they don’t happen, and if they do happen they will be short-lived and you won’t even have to think about it. The problem fixes itself.

2) Google Enterprise Applications Will Gain Large Acceptance
In 2009 Google gained significant traction in the market with its Enterprise Apps (Gmail, Docs, Calendar) and in 2010 that trend will only accelerate. Enterprises spend approximately $17b annually on Microsoft Office, and Google’s pricing model combined with its flexibility mean Microsoft could be in trouble. Organizations are always looking for ways to save money, and this is an easy one.

3) Consolidation of Cloud Computing Vendors The big players in cloud computing (Salesforce, Google, Amazon Web Services) have all built good products with basic functionality, and rely on external players to augment them. They focus on what they do best, and outsource the rest.

As many of these augmentations become more mature and become more native to the platforms, look to see the smaller companies to get swallowed up. This creates more value for the big vendors while limiting their exposure to development risk, and increases their internal talent pools.

Combine the business reasons for acquisitions with the ongoing improvements capital markets, and consolidations should make a big comeback this year.

4) "Young" Vendors Will See Explosive Growth
As more parts of the various cloud computing platforms are further opened up for development, expect to see fresh young startups blossoming to fill business requirements. I also fully expect to see our company’s offerings around sales, service, and call centers to grow for these exact reasons.

5) Cloud Computing’s Growth Accelerates
The economic turmoil has been going for over 2 years now, and it appears we are in a new normal. This environment has forced companies to cut costs and run leaner than in previous years. With IT budgets either shrinking or headcount being reduced, it is no longer optional to optimize staff’s time. Organizations do not want to waste resources on maintaining email servers or other on-premise applications when on-demand applications in the cloud make more sense financially.

Did you know the federal government spends over $75B annually on IT? With that number in mind, you can imagine the enormous amount of manpower it takes to choose, customize, build, deploy, and maintain separate instances of applications to run the government’s operations. I cannot imagine a more perfect environment to deploy cloud computing, and it is apparent that the President “gets it” too.

In keeping with his initiative for lowering the costs of running government, the White House this year launched apps.gov, an online repository for federal agencies to explore and purchase cloud-based IT services. So instead of having to individually seek out vendors, government agencies now have a one-stop shop to get most of what they’re looking for. And guess what – salesforce.com and Google are featured vendors.  

In a year of giant bailouts, it’s about time the taxpayer got a break from politicians, except this time it’s technology that’s doing all the heavy lifting.