This week's Oracle OpenWorld (ORCL) conference had 50K attendees, whereas Salesforce.com's (CRM)...

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CrimsonCap Comments (225)
 
Salesforce.com is a pioneer in cloud whereas Oracle is catching up. Therefore, one can't justfiably say that Salesforce is stealing Oracle's thunder.

Oracle needs to carve out its niche in cloud, otherwise the catchup will not happen.
5 Oct 2012, 12:00 AM Reply Like

SA Editor Eric Jhonsa Comments (563)
 
"Stealing Oracle's thunder" in enterprise apps in general, rather than cloud apps in particular. SAP is also at risk to an extent, but they've benefited from the fact that the migration to cloud ERP apps hasn't been as strong as the migration to cloud CRM and HR apps.
5 Oct 2012, 01:24 AM Reply Like

Giovan2i Comment (1)
 
I think there is an obvious reason why Oracle OpenWorld (ORCL) conference had 50K attendees, whereas Salesforce.com's (CRM) recent Dreamforce conference had 90K: the Oracle customer on average spend a lot more than Salesforce's client. Also the number of Fiat's customers is a lot more than the Rolls-Royce's!
5 Oct 2012, 06:43 AM Reply Like

SA Editor Eric Jhonsa Comments (563)
 
There are still a lot more users of Oracle software out there than of Salesforce software. I think a better counter-argument would be that Salesforce got more attendees because their products are newer and have received more industry hype lately.
5 Oct 2012, 09:50 AM Reply Like

AgainstAll Comments (36)
 
The 90K number of Salesforce is fake. The conference was held in Moscone center in SF which can't fit even a third of this number. For comparison SF Giants stadium has only 42k seats. I remember when I was at JavaOne 2007 in Moscone, it was packed, and the declared number of attendees was 12k.

Just imagine what a 90K crowd looks like. I looked at the photos of the rock concert (the widely advertized Red Hot Chili Peppers) and counted roughly 5k people.

Benioff is known for twisting and stretching the facts. Notice, they said "90k registered". They didn't say how many of them actually attended. Then, did they count only paying attendees or also those who got a free keynote/expo pass? How many of the registered attendees are free expo passes? How many were partners with free passes?

I attended CloudStock this year, and it was co-hosted with Dreamforce. The keynote room was pretty packed (4-5k people) but developer sessions were pretty empty (100 developers max). The cloud hype of Salesforce is a different story (also largely fake btw).
5 Oct 2012, 05:41 PM Reply Like

SA Editor Eric Jhonsa Comments (563)
 
Thanks for the feedback.
6 Oct 2012, 02:08 PM Reply Like

Hank Rearden Jr Comments (55)
 
Big "Like" from me. I'm glad someone pointed out the truth!
5 Oct 2012, 05:58 PM Reply Like

AgainstAll Comments (36)
 
You're welcome! There's a couple of things I'd like to add. First, what didn't make sense to me is the contrast between the number of people and the actual activity in the developer community around Salesforce platform. It just became clear: Salesforce has 8K employees. Perhaps the last Dreamforce conference was a company party presented to us as a worldwide conference.

And second: It's ironic that a number so obviously fake wasn't questioned by anyone reporting on the conference. Well, it's simply Big Lie technique (google it). I won't be surprised if next year's number will be 180K to support the "tremendous growth" story.
7 Oct 2012, 12:19 AM Reply Like

Shane10101 Comments (4)
 
Actually, it was held at the Moscone Center (West, North, and South campuses), and 7 other venues within about a 15 minute walk of Moscone: The Hilton Union Square, the Grand Hyatt, the Intercontinental, the Palace Hotel, the Novellus Theater, the Yerba Buena Forum, and the Esplande.

It was big. I'm not sure it was 90k big, but then most of the sessions I went to were in just two of the 10 venues. It's something to look into in any case. (Benioff seems pretty slimy to me.)
11 Oct 2012, 05:23 PM Reply Like

AgainstAll Comments (36)
 
Thanks for sharing. Benioff is certainly a character. I've been to two Cloudstock conferences and have seen him on stage. Compared to other tech leaders he is borderline indecent when comes to self-promotion. I mean, it's impolite to brag about yourself but that's what he does every chance he gets. And what's funny is that he begins his speeches with lawyer talk about forward-looking statements and then goes wild into making those forward-looking statements.

I have a question for you. How much did you pay (or your company paid) for your conference registration? I am really curious. The list price was around $1000 but some partner companies got up to $300 discounts. Thanks!
23 Oct 2012, 02:57 AM Reply Like