Salesforce Apex...another weak offering?

[jkliza]

Hey all,

Just wondering what everyone's (Sugar Team as well) thoughts were on Salesforce's recent announcement of thier Apex "Platform"?

It seems to me like another weak offering, targeted to non-technical pseudo-developers with the hope of locking them into thier proprietary framework.

I've seen a few very good threads at SaasBlogs.com exposing Salesforce's offerings as mediocre at best (including one that a number of salesforce folks have responded too). I tend to agree with the founders of Apprenda's position.

SaasBlogs.com - Benioff's Handcuffs for On-Demand

Opinions? Thoughts?

Jesse

[andydreisch]

I don't know ... I'm old enough to remember when creating a proprietary language constituted a Good Thing. But that was way, way back in the days of Progress, Uniface and ACCELL 4GL and other companies whose deaths coincided with the demise of the Flock of Seagulls.

Sugar is all about avoiding vendor lock-in.

Apex is not.

It's really that simple.

My $0.02.

Andy

[jkliza]

Agreed Andy.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Jesse

[RickM]

We were salesforce.com enterprise users for a couple of years and have just recently moved to the Sugar platform. We do maintain one user license on salesforce.com for access to some legacy data and to keep an eye on things strategically. (we're a technology consulting firm)

Anywho, my opinion is this... as salesforce.com has grown, people have been looking for more and more customization. Some of the recent developments like calculated fields on screens and in reports have been incremental steps in that direction. Now with Apex, you have the basis of a language with which you can develop customized applications. As things continue to move in that direction, I cannot help but wonder "why not just learn PHP and use Sugar?"

There are definitely some good things about the salesforce.com platform, don't get me wrong. I am just a fan of the complete flexibility that Sugar affords us.

Rick

[jkliza]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your insight.

I agree, I think that Apex will be somewhat of a good thing for people already using salesforce in depth, and that want to build small, basic extensions and apps without ever having a concern of moving away from salesforce.

However, why would anyone develop an application with Apex? Why learn a new language and chain yourself to thier proprietary platform, while at the same time forgoing the ability to uproot, and move your app? Why not develop it with your native language/technology stack?

Jesse

[jkliza]

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[stevec]

You're right inho - but some are tied into proprietary products and for their distributors and developers, such a rigid development method controlled by themselves is (for better or worse generally) useful to them in terms of control of interface and limitiation of interaction.

It might not be a good thing for the developers, but it might be a good thing for salesforce revenue.

For example, the company I work for sells a software product to a customer of salesforce. They want us to integrate our data outputs with their salesforce product. If the project goes ahead, we can only do it on salesforce's terms and within their limitations.

It could be argued that an API would be the same - but APEX also limits access to their code too on an individual basis as I assume the SDK is limited in rights etc

[sanver]

I don't know ... I'm old enough to remember when creating a proprietary language constituted a Good Thing. But that was way, way back in the days of Progress, Uniface and ACCELL 4GL and other companies whose deaths coincided with the demise of the Flock of Seagulls.

Sugar is all about avoiding vendor lock-in.

Apex is not.

It's really that simple.

My $0.02.

Andy

Very right - "Sugar is all about avoiding vendor lock-in". Users are not at a mercy of software company or CRM implementation partner.

Sanjay Verma
Sanver E-Solutions
www.sanver.com
Mumbai, India
+919892481284