Steve Gillmor and Nik Cubrilovic, the hosts of the new TechCrunchIT site, snagged an interview with salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff after the announcement of Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs. Benioff gives a lengthy commercial for his platforms-as-a-service strategy to remake the software industry and create a multi-billion dollar software company.
I covered the announcement today in my post “Marc Benioff’s mantra: Anything but Microsoft”.
When asked about the challenges for older enterprises, Benioff said, “I don’t have time or patience for the status quo…for people who are trying to control innovation or stop the future.” He included Microsoft, as well as unnamed vendors, partners, journalists and other parties on his list of those who are holding onto the past and getting in the way of innovation.
“Thank god for Google,” he added, citing his ally in the battle against Microsoft and the cloud-forsaken Luddites. It’s shaping up to be an interesting battle. Salesforce.com could also find itself as an acquisition target.