SalesForce.com

[ChimpMaster]

Update: I was trying to delay this a little by not sending my CV in but the (very pleasant) lady at SalesForce called me today and we had quite a lengthy discussion about the role on offer. Seems interesting I must admit, and the package on offer is pretty decent for a permie role. Best of all is the training they give in SalesForce products, along with shadowing to get new guys up to speed.

The main problem for me is that it is a consultancy role and so will involve travelling - mostly UK based but possibly Europe too.

The was some discussion around me being a contractor, which she wasn't aware of, but it didn't seem to be much of a problem for her. It might be for the hiring managers though... we'll have to wait and see.

Next step is another telephone 'chat' with a hiring manager, and then a call with an architect who will speak tech to me (no idea what though, and hopefully nothing to do with Saas!), followed by a face-to-face and then finally I will have to give a presentation! Seriously I'm not sure I can handle all of this (for half the money I'm on now (actually a third after tax )) ... but I'll go along for the ride

In the meantime, I'm gonna keep on billing....

Will keep you up to date

[Zippy]

Cheers for the update.

Hope it pans out for you.

[Scoobos]

Good to hear, lets hope it continues to progress well for you.

[MarillionFan]

I heard from a colleague in the US last week who has been doing some SalesForce consultancy, he's been able to charge at $200 per hour. SalesForce have been sending in their consultants at $250-$350(!!!!!!!)

They are seriously short of SalesForce trained people.

[ChimpMaster]

Tech interview (still only on the phone) booked for next week. Apparently he'll check my understanding of multitenancy (youwhatnow?) and development languages etc.

I've done and am doing some reading up on this stuff but it's a whole different - and more interesting - kettle than I'm used to.

[portseven]

currently doing architecture for large UK financial co, we looked at salesforce as partf of the rfp. blew us away with functionality but could not get over the fact of having customer data in the cloud. all their tenants sit on the same oracle database

[ChimpMaster]

currently doing architecture for large UK financial co, we looked at salesforce as partf of the rfp. blew us away with functionality but could not get over the fact of having customer data in the cloud. all their tenants sit on the same oracle database

Yep, multitenancy is one of the main features not only of SalesForce but also most SaaS providers. There is a hump to climb over in terms of trust but ultimately it's about security, which must clearly be a major part of any cloud provider. The security is there and there are layers of it, and the benefits of hosting data in the cloud outweigh the negatives of having to store and manage it yourself.

Clients can opt to have their own infrastructure (or even their own 'cloud') sitting behind the lightweight Salesforce apps, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of using them and would not be so effective in reducing costs.

I'm reading into this more and more each day but it's a massive new subject for me and there's only a slim chance that I'm going to get through the tech interview on Friday

[cojak]

No! Don't go in with a defeatist attitude - treat Friday as an adventure!

[eek]

Yep, multitenancy is one of the main features not only of SalesForce but also most SaaS providers. There is a hump to climb over in terms of trust but ultimately it's about security, which must clearly be a major part of any cloud provider. The security is there and there are layers of it, and the benefits of hosting data in the cloud outweigh the negatives of having to store and manage it yourself.

Clients can opt to have their own infrastructure (or even their own 'cloud') sitting behind the lightweight Salesforce apps, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of using them and would not be so effective in reducing costs.

I'm reading into this more and more each day but it's a massive new subject for me and there's only a slim chance that I'm going to get through the tech interview on Friday

To be honest your knowledge above and a read through of their marketing speak must be enough. The actual method of multi-tenancy will differ from system to system and company to company so I doubt they'll want you to know the real specifics.

[ChimpMaster]

That went well

Assuming I get through, next is the third telephone interview