I saw this a couple of days ago – and wanted to get it out there. In the SFDC community, we all have drunk so much Kool-Aid that I’m surprised we can still fit into regular pants, but “out there”, it has always seemed like there were “us” and “them” (Pink Floyd anyone?)
I’ve seen more and more of these kinds of articles though – from Managing Directors of XX Capital, YY Investment Bank and on and on, and I think we’re at an inflection point in Enterprise Software. Maybe, finally, Cloud based tech, in the form of SF and others, can take over the ERP space.
My background was ERP – in the retail industry, and so I have some experience with these kinds of systems. The complexity around them (cost accounting, warehousing, PO management, Inventory control) and on and on have made these kinds of systems difficult to build on a multi tenant platform in the past.
In addition, the sheer volumes of data associated with this kind of process have made it all but impossible to even store the data – much less allow for retrieval.
But now, with Wave, an improved Platform, Lightning Connect, Visual Force and the rest, I think the world of Finished goods at least is ready to move to the cloud. I’m going to say that within 4 or 5 years, one of the big players will take the leap, and then the race is on.