Swiping at Salesforce

People are picking on Salesforce.com again…

Taking time on his Sunday to post a little press announcement attention-grabbingly titled “Salesforce.com CRM Starts to Lose Ground to Industry Sector Specialist Commence,” Commence Corporation president Larry Caretsky contends that “We are seeing more manufacturers and distributors reject the one-size fits all approach of a Salesforce.com solution in favor of a CRM solutions provider who really understands the issues facing the industrial market.”

Caretsky’s brief offers little concrete data, however, to back up his premise, recommending instead that you check out the company’s “Smart Practices reports.” It’s a bit difficult to find any information on said reports on the company website, however, and the sad fact that “Search feature is temporarily disabled. (Please try later)” makes it impossible for CRMchump to properly back up or refute the claim.

A bit of a more tangible swipe was taken at Marc Benioff’s company late in the week by on-demand software provider Clickability. Company representatives reported on Friday with headlines of “Clickability Attracts Entrepreneurial Talent from Salesforce.com, Rob Lamb Joins SaaS Web Content Management Company…”

Lamb put in about five years in various management positions at Salesforce.com, most recently focused on creating and implementing the much-ballyhooed AppExchange partner program. Under his leadership, the team created a value-added community of more than 250 partner relationships delivering more than 500 individual solutions.

“I couldn’t pass up opportunity to apply the experience I’ve built at the bellwether SaaS company and apply it to the next break-away success, Clickability,” said Lamb.

Whether or not these personnel moves and market posturing make a huge dent in Salesforce.com, the very tone of this news makes one thing clear: Salesforce is currently the big bad no. 1 all SaaS aspires to.