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| March 27, 2015 | |
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| Welcome to Friday, Data Sheet readers. There will never be another Steve Jobs, and Apple CEO Tim Cook isn’t trying to walk in his predecessor’s shoes. But he’s coaching the company to even higher levels of success. In an exclusive profile, Fortune‘s Adam Lashinsky—who has been studying Cook closely for more than six years—explores why he’s the “World’s Greatest Leader.” At least for 2014. (Here’s the complete list, which includes controversial pick Taylor Swift.) Sticking with leadership: Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff warned Indiana there would be repercussions if it passed a controversial anti-gay law. He is being true to his word. Read on for more details. Enjoy your weekend! | |
| TOP OF MIND | |
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| Salesforce takes a stand. Indiana's governor signed a controversial bill on Thursday that could make it far easier for businesses to discriminate, especially against guys and lesbians. Truth be told, the legislation wasn't really on my radar until my Facebook feed from Salesforce Marc Benioff began filling up with his commentary. The recurring theme of his posts: "We are forced to dramatically reduce our investment in Indiana based on our employees and customers' outrage over the Religious Freedom Bill." This is not an idle threat: the foundation division for Salesforce's marketing cloud, ExactTarget, employs approximately 2,000 people in Indianapolis. Last September, the company hosted nearly 10,000 visitors there for its annual digital marketing conference. For this year, the event was moved to New York (June 15 - 17). That was technically before this law became official, so you can quibble about the motivation. So far, Salesforce's boycott involves cancelling other events and any travel to the state. Benioff has threatened to go farther, but he hasn't been specific about how. "This is one of the most important industries in the country and [the governor] has been advocating for us to expand and invest in Indiana, but you can't say that and then say you're going to legalize discrimination like this," Benioff told Re/code. "The tech industry is not going to support this kind of legislation and is going to react against it." It will not be lost on you that Indianapolis is the host city for the Final Four. On Thursday night, the NCAA expressed its opposition to the new law. It's too late too move the tournament, but who knows for next year. Benioff is calling for other tech leaders to raise their voices on the issue. So far, mostly silence, although PayPal co-founder Max Levchin spoke up on Twitter. My guess is that they will be far more vocal when it comes to North Carolina, which is considering similar legislation. The state ranks sixth in the country for tech sector employment. Among the list of companies with a huge presence there: IBM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Oh, and Apple, which has built some of its biggest solar farms there to support its massive iCloud data center. Mr. Cook? | |
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| TRENDING | |
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| BlackBerry profitable, but sales are slower. Part of that was due to excess inventory. The company expects to be "sustainably profitable" in fiscal 2016. RadioShack's best bet for survival. It's leaning toward a buyout offer from Standard General, but the company hasn't convinced all of its creditors. Meanwhile, the company has promised to exclude personal information from the sale, addressing official data privacy inquiries from Tennessee, Texas, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Viral video apps square off. Twitter's live streaming software, Periscope, is now up and running. Right now, though, Hollywood seems more excited about its competitor, Meerkat. Oculus Rift's sort-of official release date? Facebook's virtual-reality headset could be on the heads of mainstream consumers this year. The company hasn't committed officially, but its vice president of engineering mentioned that timeframe this week at the company's developer conference. Why you care: the technology could be the conduit for new commerce applications. Revelation: data breaches cost very little. Home Depot paid $28 million. Sony's bill could reach $35 million. Target's tab: $105 million, after factoring insurance and tax deductions. Considering the disruption and inconvenience they cause consumers, many security incidents are a mere blip in big-company financials. Which is probably why so many big companies have been relatively lax. | |
| THE DOWNLOAD | |
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| Why FinancialForce got another $110 million. Whoever coined the term "back office" to describe integral business functions such accounting, supply chain management and payroll probably had good intentions. The result has been less than ideal, often shutting these teams off from useful insights and creating many, slightly different views of the same customer. Six-year-old FinancialForce aims to unify that data, regardless of which side of that virtual door an employee sits. At least that it's long-term pitch. On Wednesday, the cloud business software company disclosed another $110 million funding round to accelerate product development and to hire for customer support, consulting, sales, marketing, and other functions. (It currently employs roughly 450 people.) "The back office actually has to become part of the front office," said Jeremy Roche, CEO and founder of FinancialForce.com. "It has to be part of the fundamental engagement with the customer." If the company's name sounds familiar, it should. Salesforce.com CEO and founder Marc Benioff once owned the domain but offered it to the startup after hearing the business plan. His company also became one of two founding investors, along with Dutch enterprise resourcing planning software company Unit4. The $110 million infusion this week was led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), and it also includes more money from Salesforce Ventures. FinancialForce closed a $50 million investment from Advent International in April 2014. TCV general partner Tim McAdam, who joined the FinancialForce.com board, likened the company to an early-stage Salesforce.com or ExactTarget (TCV was a late-stage investor in the email marketing company, now part of Salesforce). "Businesses are realizing that its not just about interacting with the customer on the Web or in email or in chat, it's about the context," McAdam said. "They need to have insight into the entire customer journey at every touch point, from quote to cash." and everywhere in between. High-profile customers listed on the FinancialForce Web site include Akamai and Hewlett-Packard. Most of its publicly declared accounts are midsize businesse scaling up their accounting software or other systems of record that want their new software to link with the Salesforce platform. Their goal, Roche said, is to help all employees regardless of role better answer questions from clients and prospects. "The worst thing a customer can experience is silence," he said. FinancialForce is tightlipped about most of its own financial metrics, although the company reported a $50 million revenue run rate for 2014, with about 80% of that business from North America. It also recorded 91% growth for its "annual subscription run rate." | |
| ALSO WORTH SHARING | |
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| Huge paycheck for new Google CFO. Ruth Porat will get nearly $70.7 million in cash and stock to leave her job at Morgan Stanley. This isn't a game. Zynga must face allegations that it defrauded potential investors in days leading into (and out of) its December 2011 initial public offering. A lawsuit suggests that management hid declines in user activity and failed to address the risks associated with Facebook's evolving technical strategy. Bigger buyback for Yahoo. Its board has approved another $2 billion for share repurchases, on top of the $9.7 billion it has spent since 2012. The move is meant to appease activity investor Starboard Value, which isn't happy with CEO Marissa Mayer's turnaround progress. HP nears deal in China. Citing sources close to the negotiation, The Wall Street Journal reports that Tsinghua Unigroup is the "preferred bidder" for slightly more than half of the company's Chinese data-networking business. The transaction could free up money for acquisitions after HP's split is complete. New dimension in flash storage. There's only so much you can shrink a chip before it doesn't work as well. So, Intel and Micron are stacking them to save space and boost capacity. Samsung is working on a similar approach. | |
| MY FORTUNE BOOKMARKS | |
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| Report: Disturbing drop in women in computing field by Erik Sherman Why Porsche believes the future is electric by Jason H. Harper There's some very good news for Twinkies fans by Benjamin Snyder How Walmart will get you to order your groceries online by Ben Geier CEOs tell Congress: Patent trolls are giving us the shakedown by Jeff John Roberts Zuckerberg says Facebook's giant Internet drones are already flying by Ben Geier | |
| ONE MORE THING | |
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| Soul searching. Regardless of the verdict, there will be at least two positive outcomes from the Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins case: more women are likely to speak up, and more men are likely to listen. | |
| MARK YOUR CALENDAR | |
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| Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit: Crossing the divide. (March 30 - April 1; Las Vegas) AWS Summit. First in a series of cloud strategy briefings. (April 9; San Francisco) Knowledge15: Automate IT services. (April 19 - 24; Las Vegas) RSA Conference: The world talks security. (April 20 - 24; San Francisco) Forrester's Forum for Technology Leaders: Win in the age of the customer. (April 27 - 28; Orlando, Fla.) MicrosoftIgnite: Business tech extravaganza. (May 4 - 8; Chicago) NetSuite SuiteWorld: Cloud ERP strategy. (May 4 - 7; San Jose, California) EMC World: Data strategy. (May 4 - 7; Las Vegas) SAPPHIRE NOW: The SAP universe. (May 5 - 7; Orlando, Florida) Gartner Digital Marketing Conference: Reach your destination faster. (May 5 - 7; San Diego) Cornerstone Convergence: Connect, collaborate. (May 11 - 13; Los Angeles) Annual Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference: JP Morgan's 43rd invite-only event. (May 18 - 20; Boston) MongoDB World: Scale the universe. (June 1 - 2; New York) HP Discover: Trends and technologies. (June 2 - 4; Las Vegas) Hadoop Summit San Jose: Mainstreaming adoption. (June 9 - 11; San Jose, California) Red Hat Summit: Energize your enterprise. (June 23 - 26; Boston) Brainstorm Tech: Fortune's invite-only gathering of thinkers, influencers and entrepreneurs. (July 13 - 15; Aspen, Colorado) VMworld: The virtualization ecosystem. (Aug. 30 - Sept. 3, 2015; San Francisco) Dreamforce: The Salesforce community. (Sept. 15 - 18; San Francisco) BoxWorks 2015: Cloud collaboration solutions. (Sept. 28 - 30; San Francisco) Workday Rising: Meet and share. (Sept. 28 - Oct. 1; Las Vegas) Gartner Symposium ITxpo: CIOs and senior IT executives. (Oct. 4 - 8; Orlando, Florida) Oracle OpenWorld: Customer and partner conference. (Oct. 25 - 29; San Francisco) | |
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