The Cisco/Salesforce.com Partnership and Business Implications  

The partnership between Cisco and Salesforce.com is a reason to celebrate for the investors in both companies. Many partnerships between businesses often have an abundance of pros and cons. Some cut costs, but deliver an inferior product. Some deliver better products, but end up complicating delivery, increasing costs, or being improperly executed. The deal between Cisco and Salesforce.com to integrate the Cisco Unified Communications system with salesforce's Service Cloud 2 will prove to be one of the better partnerships.

The two companies are both growing strong, despite the recession. Cisco CEO John Chambers had predicted strong growth for his company, believing the internet 2.0 would drive strong productivity growth. "Even in this downturn," says John Chambers, "We intend to be the most aggressive we've ever been.". Today that couldn't have proven more true. The company reached out to Salesforce and was able to achieve the partnership.

The reason why this is a big deal for both companies is simple: profits. For Cisco, it means a new source of revenue. For salesforce, it means a superior contact center in their cloud computing solution, which in turn means a new valuable service will be provided to their customers. Not only will the companies benefit, but the consumer as well from the reputable service Cisco has established. Salesforce is encouraging their SMBs (small and mid-sized business) customers to run their entire customer service within the cloud. The relevancy here is that in cloud computing they charge by usage, so inevitably a customer who migrates their customer service into the cloud will increase their usage, thereby increasing revenue for salesforce.

Overall, it allows many medium and small businesses to move entirely into the cloud with a superior service. The company also stated that both Cisco and Salesforce plan to move technology into the cloud and "leverage social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter" to deliver services to their customers where they are already collaborating. Overall the two companies seem enthusiastic to work together, and confident that the end result will be a benefit to their customers, the company, and their investors.
The author is a blogger who writes about cheap web hosting services. You can find the news story about this partnership at Cisco partners with Sales Force.