RSDC

IBM's upcoming acquisition of Telelogic (read more here) merited a break-out teleconference at the company's Rational Software Development Conference (RSDC). Danny Sabbah, general manager for IBM Rational Software, led the session.

Comment Service oriented architectures, or SOAs, have been positioned as the great leap forwards in how IT will finally come to be the major facilitator to the business.

However, uptake around the world remains mixed, and the levels of understanding that Quocirca finds in organisations as to what constitutes an SOA remains relatively low, especially within the business community.

Discussions with vendors in the SOA space show that they also find getting the SOA message across is difficult.

Next Wednesday sees the inaugural evening meeting for the Leeds chapter of GeekUp - the techie social night that is taking the north-west of England by storm.

GeekUp is a monthly techy meet-up held in Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool. Leeds' first event will be held at the Cross Keys pub, in Water Lane, next to the Round Foundry Leeds Media Centre.

Editor's blog A recent chat with Peter Dragunas, HP's director of network domain solutions, has highlighted the way business models are now assuming greater importance than technology in the development of service-based environments.

His own area of responsibility, HP's telecommunications service provider customers, are proving to be a good hunting ground for inspiration and guidance on how to develop solutions to the business problems faced by many other sectors where a service-based infrastructure is being implemented or contemplated.

The ability to deliver usable applications to employees anywhere they happen to be will define the future of IT says Mark Templeton, chief executive officer of infrastructure software specialist Citrix.

Kicking off Citrix's annual iForum event in Edinburgh, Templeton warned IT departments that they had to meet the challenge posed by a combination of new-style applications and a new generation of computer users who had grown up in the age of MySpace and YouTube:

Microsoft has turned to Autonomy to inject structured and unstructured search capabilities into its SharePoint collaboration platform for large, mixed deployments.

Salesforce.com and Google have announced an online ads and CRM alliance that'll have some in Silicon Valley feeling deflated this morning.

The result of the tie-in is Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords. This will combine the creation and management of campaigns using Google AdWords with Salesforce.com's dashboard and customer relationship management (CRM) platform.

Interview TIBCO's Stefan Farestam talks with Reg Developer about the ground rules of SOA governance.

Try asking enterprise executives what policies they have in place to ensure legislative compliance for their information. If you get a positive reply, be very sceptical; a negative reply probably represents more realism.

Compliance is becoming a bogeyman for some of the big enterprises after recent debacles where requested information was not easily forthcoming - leading to huge fines and jail sentences. However, compliance is only symptomatic of a more intractable problem.

BEA Systems is paying the price for playing hardball on service oriented srchitecture (SOA), announcing a "surprising" drop in first-quarter sales.

As part of its sustained campaign to dominate the emerging world of on-demand applications, salesforce.com has announced a version of the Skype Internet-based telephone software to work with its Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) package.

VMware is joining the rush down the road of paravirtualisation already being trodden by the likes of Novell and Microsoft.

Editors' Blog Almost 30 years ago when I first did my IT training, part of it was spent in ops, mounting tapes and trying to keep important systems operating efficiently.

At the same time, I met a programmer who took pleasure in "keeping the operators awake" by making them mount tapes pointlessly. Then I went into DBA, which (in those days) was a sort of "halfway house" between ops, development and good practice training.

Ever since then, I've been convinced that application design should include operational design. Any good application will be used for a lot longer than it took to develop, and throughout that time it will need performance tuning, recovery, upgrading, and so on – all of which represent special "user requirements".

MIX07 It could have been so different.

Thinkers and creatives from publishing and advertising – Coke, The Economist and others - met for a Microsoft MIX07 panel, to debate and generally conclude that technology is a great way for reaching consumers.

After two days of Microsoft extolling the joys of convergence and multimedia content that’s delivered through Windows PCs, mobile devices, websites and the Xbox community, it was to be the frosting on Microsoft's new media cake.

But no-one had handed Andrew Rashbass the script.

Analysis An imploding software industry could be just what customers need. You're going to end up with cheap, specialized software and all kinds of wonderful services to support the code.

We're pretty sure that's what executives, researchers and developers told us yesterday, during a Carnegie Mellon West sponsored event at Microsoft's Silicon Valley headquarters.

Sapphire SAP and Microsoft executives have embraced warmly and expressed respect for each other's applications while neatly side-stepping looming competition.

CA World 2007: CA’s integration of Wily is bearing fruit - three integrated products will be available from this summer and the department has gained 150 new customers and increased headcount by 81 per cent.

Salesforce.com is decoupling its signature CRM service from the hosted platform, taking it into ERP territory by running more of its customers' businesses.

Iona, the Irish software house, continued its acquisition spree with the purchase of LogicBlaze on Tuesday.

LogicBlaze provides business integration solutions based on open source technologies. In a statement, Iona said its latest acquisition is based on the assumption that its future service oriented architecture (SOA) deployments will include multiple technologies, including many from the open source community.

A question sometimes asked is "what do we need analysts for?" Well, according to Dr Jim White of Managed Objects, customers for new technology often select the short list for "requests for quotation" from the analyst's "Magic Quadrants", "Waves", or whatever. So, analysts help businesses choose sensible short lists for procurement.

Microsoft and EMC plan to fuse EMC's Smarts diagnostics software with Windows System Center Operations Manager as part of a licensing and technology collaboration, the companies said this week.

Offshore applications testing is already big business, but for the client of such services there is always concern about whether they are getting the best possible mix of service level and cost.

BEA Systems is set to receive a $13m signing bonus for moving its HQ to San Jose's sprawling downtown from city fathers eager to woo Silicon Valley based businesses.

San Jose's Redevelopment Agency has agreed to pay BEA in an effort to finally fill an office development that's been empty since construction in 2003.

IBM polished up another facet of its Lotus product suite today with a promise to turn every corporate network into a bubbling MySpace clone.

Concerned that all the effort you are putting in to develop upgraded applications to run on Microsoft Vista may bring client systems around the company network to a grinding halt? Well, there is a simple way to check those client systems out in advance.

Touchstone Software has come up with a free online test system called Vista Agent that may be able to help.

Users simply log on here and follow the instructions. The agent then loads an ActiveX control to scan the computer and identify the weak points in its current specification and recommend solutions – which unsurprisingly include spending money on bigger disks, memory and the like. According to Touchstone the scan is carried out to Microsoft’s recently published hardware requirements.

The ActiveX control may cause some business networks to baulk at the firewall, but for all that the idea is a sound one.

There is no point in putting in the development effort if the client desktop systems are all too skimpy to cope; and standard Murphy’s Law predictions suggest this will most likely be the case. ®

By following his demonic uncle Screwpole’s advice, devil initiate Mugwort has had much success in eroding the quality of his victim’s payment engine project and has written an excited e-mail to his uncle. Here is Screwpole’s reply…

To: Mugwort
From: Uncle Screwpole
Subject: As promised, how to categorise projects… [spam?]

My dearest Mugwort,

You may recall I promised to advise you on the types of projects you will surely encounter. You must arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can on how to sabotage these projects. If you fail to heed my advice, the Infernal Hierarchy will surely force you to spend an eternity making promotional scratch-cards to put in magazines!

So pay attention: in the world of software projects, there are two aspects you must always consider. First, the experience of the team. This represents the competence of its members; modified by the number of times they have carried out projects of a similar nature. The other is the completeness of vision. This is how well the team understands the project requirements; and also includes the customers’ ability to express what they really want (always try to persuade them to design the technical solution rather than just to ask for what they need).

Building a pre-fabricated house

Your victim’s first – successful - project [I do hope, but not a lot, that you’ve recovered from being slobbered upon by the giant, disembodied floating mouth] was like building a pre-fabricated house, as I pointed out in my last correspondence. The team were familiar with the 25th database plug-in they were building and knew exactly what to do, with a very clear vision.

In this type of project, the goals are to deliver better, faster and cheaper than before. Most senior managers wrongly believe that all projects are like this. [Keep them ignorant of the truth and these same senior managers will be your clockwork toys of IT destruction – wind them up and send them flailing into other projects!].

For these projects, you must at all costs stop your victim from using Gantt charts, PERT analysis, Critical Path Analysis and Earned Value Analysis. These might make him focus on the dependencies, interfaces and costs of these projects.

Publishing a newspaper

Imagine if you can, dear boy, the morning meeting at a newspaper. The editor has a clear vision of the day’s issues [Really? – Ed] and allocates stories to individuals. The staff are experienced journalists in their fields, and do not need to be told how to write articles [Well, up to a point, Lord Copper – Ed].

In projects of this type, there are four danger signs for you to look out for: frequent planning, a deep trust of the staff, the removal of barriers, and a reduction of critical resources.

It is especially dangerous, Mugwort, if you find your victim creating a detailed plan for a short period (just a few weeks at most), observing progress and amending the plan constantly. Instead, try to bend the victim’s gaze far into the future and get him to amend his Gantt charts constantly, and for many weeks in advance. [In my next email, I’ll share a few trade secrets on how to sabotage time estimates…]

In many ‘newspaper’-style projects, only certain people can do certain types of work – insist that this continues! Heaven forbid [and it would make our jobs easier if it did] that people should identify single experts and other critical resources, and take steps to remove these bottlenecks.

Take note of these particular projects. You will meet these often, as most software projects are like this; even though most managers don’t realise it.

Voyage of discovery

Although many IT projects are like this previous type, frequently you will have projects which truly are “voyages of discovery”, and occasionally some will be dragged down into this state by staff inexperience. You can tell a ‘voyage of discovery’ when the manager has a very specific problem that neither he nor the team know how to solve.

I recall a project, many ages ago, where my victim needed to work out how to extract data from a legacy system. No one on the team had experience with this system; or, indeed, with the type of technology involved.

I am ashamed to admit, my lad, that the project was a success… well, I tried to claim, only a “seriously qualified” failure. My victim’s first step was to create ‘taskforces’ to explore the many options, and then he began a two-day “heartbeat”, in which taskforces reported back and refined their searches. These processes allowed them to time-box their costs and quickly evaluate and reject poor ideas.

In only two weeks, an apparently intractable problem had been solved. The manager swiftly moved back to a comfortable place. My place was not so comfortable. I spent the next eon sewing together tiny, sock-sized black holes to put inside washing machines.

To avoid such a fate, you must encourage your victim to plan and document in endless detail. Advise him never to discard ideas that are not working. Guide the team down the initial, wrong path. Remind them that, after all, they have spent so much time on it already...

Dark place

In the dark place, everyone knows there’s a problem but no one has any experience of solving it. There’s no clearly defined vision and the team hasn’t delivered anything of this kind before. My fondest memory of a project like this was at a company with several CRM systems that were being merged into a unified whole. Fortunately for me, that was the only specification available.

Fortunately for you, it takes a very strong manager to navigate out of the dark place. The manager needs to identify a vision that delivers value; and then has to find a sufficiently powerful champion to support this vision. If it is approved, then it is possible for the manager to move the project forward and offer real benefit.

You should find it easy to avoid this “healthy” [ugh] situation. Obscure your victim’s vision and never allow a regular heartbeat to take hold. Your manager may try to spawn sub-projects of the ‘voyage of discovery’ or ‘newspaper’ variety to move the project forward - prevent this happening at any cost, by sabotaging senior management approval (point out how wasteful such “non strategic” efforts are).

Whisper in your victim’s ear that he should strive to solve the problem in a single impressive leap, rather than in a chain of small weaselling stages.

But enough lecturing for this week, my nephew. I must attend the second-hand soul auction – I need a quivering human spirit to scream at in the mornings.

I look forward to your next email, Mugwort. Do not let me down.

Phil Rice is CTO of software vendor Erudine

With acknowledgement to CS Lewis' "Screwtape Letters".

®

One of the hottest topics in computing in 2006 was virtualization. Like many other trends before it, it had many definitions, many disguises, and the FUD factor was significant. Some advances were made, much confusion was added to the system by companies jumping on bandwagons or squandering precious marketing time wandering about the weeds of technical details, but some valuable ground was gained as well. This piece is not meant to be a detailed analysis of the year that was, but a way to look at how we got to today and what we expect for the coming year.

Column I'm a developer. I spend my time sitting at a computer, working on our IT infrastructure. Contrary to stereotype, I have just a cheapo computer and no fancy gizmos. I take pride in the Apache hat I wear to write this column. But sometimes we need to take a step back, and look at the why of it. As we enter a new year, let's share a glimpse into that question.

Alice stood up nervously. This was her big day, the presentation she'd been working towards for longer than she cared to remember. For the first time ever, she had the full attention of the Red Queen and the board. The Queen gave her a nod, and she plucked up courage to start.

"Ladies and Gentlemen. As you know, energy is one of our principal costs. We have a target of an eight percent reduction in energy usage on existing business. Since the introduction of emissions trading, this represents not just a cost saving, but also a new asset we can sell. My proposal today is to reduce energy usage not by eight percent, but by one hundred percent!"

"Are you proposing a complete cessation of our business?", asked the Red Queen critically.

"Yesyesyes," interrupted the March Hare enthusiastically. "It's like agricultural setaside, where we get paid because we own land but don't farm it. Now we own emissions quotas because we're a highly polluting business, and we can get paid not to use it."

"Beats working for a living," added the dormouse.

"No, that's not what I mean," said Alice. "I'm not proposing to abandon any of our current business. I just want to do it more efficiently."

"But 100 per cent", asked the Caterpillar. "You can always grow or shrink a budget, but that doesn't eliminate it altogether. Unless ..."

"Look, dammit, we need energy just to make the tea," he continued, as the Mad Hatter poured another cup.

"Sorry, that's not what I meant", replied Alice. "I don't mean we eliminate all energy use. The 100 per cent figure is rounded to the nearest percentage point, because the actual saving is greater than 99½%. Our clients save time and hassle, too."

At this point, the White Rabbit rushed in, in a great fluster. "Terribly sorry about that. You wouldn't believe the traffic!" Alice sighed, but the Queen just nodded: travel delays are a fact of modern life.

"What is it that we do that uses energy?" Alice continued. "We move people around. But why do we move people around?"

"We're a travel business. That's what we get paid for."

"Only in an old-fashioned literal sense. But our clients aren't the people we move: it's their companies who pay us. In fact, the people themselves are quite an expense, what with the airmiles and other kickbacks. Why can't we service our clients' needs more efficiently?"

"Our clients need to move people around. To keep the wheels of commerce running. That's what they pay us for!"

"No!" replied Alice. "Our clients need is communication, with other companies around the world. That used to mean travel, but today we have better alternatives. We can provide our clients with the best ever communications infrastructure to meet their needs. And with the profits from emissions trading, we can do it all at no charge to them! And in place of airmiles, we can offer an honest incentive: business-grade connections to every employee's home, which it would be futile to try and restrict to business use alone."

"That'll save them commuting hassle and expense, too: they're not in the same emissions market as us!", added the White Rabbit. "And I need never be late for another frightfully important meeting again!"

"Exactly!" replied Alice. "It's not just the company that stands to gain!"

"So, we become our own client too. Our service stands out so much we'd be fools not to!"

"I'm sorry Alice," said the Queen. "It's a great idea, but if we adopt it, we're no longer a highly-polluting company, and the subsidies no longer apply. Do you think we can ..."

Alice woke with a start. Mother was telling her to get up. Of course, mum had to leave stupidly early to get to her meeting today, which meant dropping Alice off at the greasy spoon café across the road from school even earlier. Sigh. At least she could dream of a more sensible world. ®

Bootnote

Nick Kew notes: This year marks the 20^th anniversary of his starting to bang on about the transport debate being altogether the wrong argument. While freight needs transport, most of our economy today is non-physical, and information needs communication instead. Even today, we take universal road access for granted (courtesy of the taxpayer), yet you cannot even guarantee broadband availability on a house you want to move to. So the information society is still at a huge disadvantage.

This is what motivates my work in developing our communications infrastructure, including my work with Apache and the W3C. Readers interested in a more serious take on the subject are referred to my online manifesto, and the dedication to my book, [which is actually about Apache development, and is available for pre-order here - Ed]:

To all who share my dream, and are working to help make it happen.

... the dream of a world where your work, your colleagues, and your opportunities in life are not dictated by where you live, or how far you commute. Where the old-fashioned office of the 19^th and 20^th centuries has passed into history, along with its soul-destroying bums-on-seats culture and Dilbertian work practices. A world inclusive of those who cannot work in a standard office. A world inclusive of those who reject car-dependence, but embrace a full and active life. A world inclusive of those who seek to fit study and learning in to a busy life, yet have no accessible library, let alone university. Of those who are housebound ...

Our information infrastructure is poised to liberate us all. We who develop with Apache are playing a small but exciting part in that. This work is dedicated to all of us!

I was motivated to write this slightly-seasonal sketch when I heard they might be introducing emissions trading including free quotas for airlines. The underlying assumptions are truly worthy of the original Alice's world. We make a big fuss about tiny reductions in pollution, yet put obstacles and disincentives in the way of huge reductions!

We bring you a new Reg Developer author, a specialist in crossing the chasm between analysis and design

Java middleware vendor BEA Systems has received a second warning from Nasdaq over potential delisting of its stock for failing to file financial results.

Salesforce.com is today expected to take its latest step towards improving integration with third-parties' software, including business rival Oracle.

The hosted CRM pioneer will announce an extension to its recently launched Apex platform and language called ConnectOut, which enables other applications to be notified of business events in Salesforce.com. ConnectOut – part of Salesforce.com’s new ApexConnect family of services - is scheduled for release with the Winter 07 edition of Salesforce.com CRM.

Also due is ConnectOracle for integration with the Oracle 11i database, for bi-directional synchronization of data like customer account information between Salesforce.com and an Oracle repository. Integration is provided through a pre-built customer-master template.

ConnectOracle follows this summer's launch of ConnectSAP, starts at $1,000 per customer per month, runs to $12,000 annually and is available on request from Salesforce.com.

Missing from ConnectOracle, though, is integration between the Oracle-owned PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications. Neither is there integration with Microsoft Dynamics. Salesforce.com said it picked Oracle in response to customer demand.

The launch is intended to enhance the attraction of Salesforce.com's multi-tenant, hosted business application platform over single-tenant applications from Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. Single-tenancy systems traditionally have a tendency to be complex, thanks to their architecture and the number of modules plugged-in through customization, making upgrades and integration notoriously difficult.

ConnectOut capitalizes on the multi-tenant model, where many people use the same platform, by making integration and customization easier. Connecting with non-Salesforce.com systems occurs at the API layer making it possible to kick-start an outbound message from Salesforce.com to another business application, such as an order fulfillment system.

That is a potential riposte to Netsuite, its software as a service rival NetSuite, which is knocking Salesforce.com for being "only" CRM, by lacking the back-end platform that enterprise resource planning (ERP) provides to run a business.

ConnectOut builds on the Apex platform and language released in October. Apex uses a combination of web services interfaces, AJAX and real-time messaging and integration to combine applications. It is unclear just how far ConnectOut gets into the guts of enterprise applications and data, though, or whether that will remain the preserve of dedicated integrations such as those for Oracle and SAP. Salesforce.com claimed dozens of customers are in production on ConnectSAP. Salesforce.com also provides integration with Microsoft Office, Outlook and Lotus Notes.

According to Salesforce.com, it is helping reduce the cost of integration associated with installing applications. "Prior to ConnectSAP and ConnectOracle a lot of that connection was developed with Salesforce.com and partners. We are shifting more burden to Salesforce.com," Salesforce.com senior vice president Kendall Collins told The Register. "We will continue to pre-package the most popular and widely used product sets."

Salesforce.com will also flag-up integrations using Apex for third-parties on AppExchange, making them easier for customers to find. An Apex Connected category will list 25 offerings from partners who include Tibco, Scribe and Informatica.®

BEA Systems is out of favor on Wall Street amid growing concern it's losing business to IBM and Oracle and growth is being fluffed out by services.

The company's shares tumbled 17 per cent by early afternoon trading the day after reporting preliminary results that narrowly missed analysts' expectations.

Merrill Lynch cut BEA's share price targets, telling clients the stock is overvalued and that the company's growth is being eclipsed by IBM and Oracle. According to Merrill, "evidence of decelerating license growth mounts".

BEA on Wednesday reported 19 per cent revenue growth to $347.7m for its third quarter - Thompson Financial expected $348.7m. Worse, revenue from sales of new software was beaten by services. Licensing grew 12 per cent to $136.4m compared to services, which increased 24 per cent to $211.3m

The company did not say whether growth is coming from its existing WebLogic business or companies acquired for AquaLogic. Also, BEA has not reported full results because of an internal review into stock option grants.

BEA expects fourth-quarter revenue between $378m and $392m. Analysts are expecting $382.3m.®

The (generally speaking uncustomisable) user interface of online business services is the last significant stumbling block they have had to face. This has meant that users of services such as those from Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor NetSuite have had to use the UI that comes with the service, even if it didn't really fit their business processes.

Comment E2E Technologies, which stands for 'end-to-end', is a Swiss company in the application integration space and is not to be confused with either e2e Media, which is a marketing company, or E2E, which is a UK government educational initiative.

Its product, the E2E Bridge, can do more than application integration, as we will discuss later, but that is the company's clear focus. So, who is E2E and what is special about it?

E2E was founded in 1996 by two ex-IT directors of the Swiss Bank Corporation, at that time primarily a service company, though the founders already had a vision for an integration product. Subsequently, in 1998 the Swiss Bank Corporation merged with the Swiss Bank Society to form what we now know as UBS. In its wisdom, UBS decided to use SBC's leading edge retail front-end application with SBS's legacy back-end systems which, as you can imagine, involved a significant integration project and it contracted E2E for that purpose and the E2E Bridge, as a product, stemmed from that engagement.

Now, the E2E Bridge is UML (Unified Modelling Language)-based. That is, you build a UML model that describes your integration and then… well, nothing actually, that's it: you just build a UML model!

I can imagine eyebrows raising at this point. They certainly did when I heard about it for the first time. How is this possible?

Well, E2E has built a UML virtual machine, a UVM if you like, which works just like other virtual machines: it executes what it has been designed for, in this case UML models. In other words, in E2E there is no code (well, there is UML byte code that is executed by the UVM but you don't see this), there is nothing to keep synchronised with the design, because there is no code. Let me make this quite clear, in case you haven't got the message: there is no code!

I don't think I need to spell out the advantages of having no code but maybe I should. It means you can do things much faster. Much, much faster. Which means it costs less. And it is easier to maintain. Much, much easier. Which means it costs even less than less, Need I go on? Well, one more thing: UML is self documenting, and since the UML diagrams are the application (in effect) then so is the documentation (ditto).

Of course, the bright sparks amongst you will already have guessed that if all you have to do is build UML diagrams and then execute them, then you are not limited to using this for application integration and, indeed, E2E has users amongst its dozen or so customers that are using the technology for general-purpose application development as well, but that is clearly not the company's target market.

E2E is relatively small but has interesting partners. The product embeds No Magic's MagicDraw for the purposes of creating the UML models and No Magic is also reselling the E2E Bridge; as is Adaptive, the now US-based but originally UK repository vendor. IDS Scheer is also a partner.

I asked in the title of this article whether E2E was even better than sliced bread? I don't know who invented the expression "the best thing since sliced bread" but whoever it was, was an idiot. I grant you that it is convenient but anyone who has ever been in a boulangerie will know that it hardly compares with the real thing.

Anyway, how does E2E compare to sliced bread? Well, frankly, Tibco and WebMethods and other vendors doing traditional application integration things are more like sliced bread, E2E is more comparable to a freshly baked croissant, perhaps the epitome of the baker's art.

Copyright © 2006, IT-Analysis.com

Ray Noorda, the almost-founder of Novell, is dead at 82, following a long battle with Alzheimer's.

Noorda joined Novell, Provo, Utah in 1983 when it had just 17 employees. He presided over enormous growth at the company, helped by Netware, its enormously successful network operating system. By the time he left in 1995, the company had more 12,000 staff.

In Noorda's latter years at Novell, rumours about his failing memory swirled through the tech publishing scene. But he was able to make a new mark as the founder of Canopy Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that has invested in over 100 companies.

Among his achievements, Noorda is credited by Canopy as the inventor of the modern channel structure, which is still probably the most important sales distribution outlet for the tech industry.

His obit is here ®.

Salesforce.com wants developers to create more online business applications using its AppExchange platform.

The company makes its revenue from offering Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software as a web-delivered service rather than an application. It hopes developers will use the platform to create other business applications which are delivered as a service in the same way.

The move will put it into competition with Microsoft, which is promoting its Windows Live service to achieve the same thing.

Early next year the company will make developer tools and code available.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will detail the announcement later today at the firm's user conference.

More from CNet here.

CRM rival NetSuite is offering defecting Salesforce customers a discount for switching to its product. ®