August 20
Over the course of the summer I attended a Salsesforce.com “Success Day”. Salesforce.com gives a couple of short pitches but predominantly, they hold break-out sessions where they parade clients who report successes – successes in their transitions to Salesforce.com and business successes because of it. This is useful to me as a consultant who may want to suggest Salesforce.com as a candidate solution to a client problem.
They left me with one bad impression, however.
Every Salesforce.com presentation started out with what they call a “safe harbor” statement. The pitches didn’t all have the same statement – they got increasingly protective.
The essence, after you boil it all down, is that they don’t commit to anything they say. They may never deliver the features they’re talking about. The feature may work differently than they showed. The feature may not go into production at the date proffered. The feature may not do what you want. Etc., etc., etc.
he unfortunate message is clear: First, we protect ourselves; now, how can we help you?
By contrast, I also went to the DestinationCRM conference this summer and stopped at booths showing Microsoft CRM, Sage (ACT and SalesLogix), SugarCRM, RightNow, Maximizer, and Front Range (Goldmine), to name a few. I asked lots of questions, but never did this kind of protectiveness surface even though there there was lots of discussion about features coming “in the next release”.
Anyone who has lived on planet Earth knows that technology products often don’t come out when they’re promised, don’t always function as imagined, and aren’t free of problems. In fact, in the world of our broader experience, the Prius doesn’t get 60 city miles per gallon for everyone, Echinacia doesn’t cure colds, real estate investments don’t just go up in value, and reading Men’s Health won’t give you flat abs no matter how many issues you buy.
SaaS Licensing
Quite by coincidence, while at a breakfast meeting of the New England Chapter of the Institute of Management Consultants, I met another consultant who specializes in software law - Eric Esperne of James River Consulting, LLC. I asked him for his opinion on this self-protective behavior, and, quite fortuitously, he had just published an article in Mass High Tech on software as a service (SaaS). I recommend that you read it, particularly since it illustrates some differences between SaaS licensing and traditional software licensing.
After reading his article, I went to the websites for Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and SugarCRM. I found no terms and conditions on Netsuite; presumably you see those when you sign up. For Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, they both repeat several themes – they own the service and trademarks, you can’t do nasty things to their services, the flaws of the Internet may disrupt services, etc.
In many ways, this is no different than other utility services we buy every day. We expect brownouts and blackouts (you all have UPS’s on your critical computers, don’t you?). The effect of reading what we would expect anyway in these legally bullet-proof statements is that we ignore them. (When was the last time you installed an application and you actually read the end user license agreement before clicking “I Agree”?).
And therein lies the danger. There may be other terms that are not based on common sense, and they can be onerous. If you didn’t bother to read them, you could be in for some nasty surprises.
For example, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM don’t guarantee anything – not uptime, not availability. You wouldn’t agree to that if you signed a managed services hosting agreement to run your own CRM system.
But Salesforce.com requires you to agree to something even more scary. If you breach the terms of use, they can destroy your data without notice. In fact, there’s no guarantee that you will ever see your data again, and if you’re betting your business on Salesforce.com, that’s something for you to contemplate.
Software as a Service (SaaS) provides some terrific advantages, and they can’t remain in business unless they operate as the market would expect. But keep your eyes open.
Unfortunately, I now have to make my disclaimer, even though this is common sense: Nothing you’ve read above is legal advice, and you have to have your company lawyer render opinions on any license agreements and terms of service you agree to.
Nuts to Common Sense
Protectiveness beyond common sense is not limited to software companies, of course. On a recent trip on Amtrak's Acela, I picked up a snack in the cafe car that was a perfect example.
The front of the package said "Lightly Salted Peanuts" in half inch type clearly distinguishable from the background. On the back is a logo for "Trophy NUTS", with "NUTS" in similarly large type.
So what’s in the bag?
The ingredients are listed: Peanuts, salt, roasted in peanut oil. And of course the country of origin..."PACKED IN U.S.A. Peanuts from U.S.A." There’s more printed on the package, but let me stop here.
So, what’s in the bag?
If by chance the buyer has not yet looked through the clear plastic wrapper at the nuts inside, the sentence in small print on the back may answer the question:
“ALLERGY INFORMATION: Product produced in a facility that processes peanuts and tree nuts. May contain peanuts or tree nuts.”
Glad they’ve clarified that for those who might be in danger….
