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Looking to build your business on the cloud? Needs some advice? Check out our “Partner Tip” series under the Salesforce Partners YouTube playlist.

In this inaugural edition, Chris Barbin of Appirio sits down with IDC’s Michael Fauscette and offers partners advice, as well as war stories on what it took to build a successful cloud solutions company from the ground up.

Enjoy these bite-sized nuggets of wisdom individually below, or click here for our entire menu of partner videos.

• Part 1: Appirio Talks About Building a Business on the Cloud
• Part 2: Is Appirio an SI, ISV, or Both?
• Part 3: Appirio, What Advice Would You Give an SI?
• Part 4: Appirio on Building their Professional Services Enterprise App
• Part 5: How is Appirio's Business Doing?

The cloud is waiting.

Last November, nearly 16,000 people gathered at Dreamforce 2009 to hear the latest news from Marc Benioff and the salesforce.com team, the introduction of Chatter, and to get all the best practices, networking, inspiration, and training they needed to succeed.

 

This March/April, the salesforce.com team will take the best of Dreamforce across North America, with Cloudforce Events in:

 

• 3/2 Atlanta, GA
• 3/4 Chicago, IL
• 4/6 Reston, VA
• 4/8 New York, NY
• 4/12 Seattle, WA

The Cloudforce Tour is your opportunity to meet the salesforce.com executive team, network with customers and partners, and take advantage of an invaluable lead generation opportunity as you meet with an audience of customers, prospects, and partners who are focused on CRM success as well as the platform.

 

For more information, please contact Chung Nguyen at cnguyen@salesforce.com.

Don’t miss out on the chance to optimize your AppExchange listing by making sure your company gets credit for every certified consultant or developer you have on staff.  Customer prospects will look at this number when evaluating your company to see how many salesforce.com experts you have! And remember that as of February 1st, 2010 it is a mandatory requirement of the consulting program to have a minimum of 1 certified consultant or developer on staff. So don’t wait to associate your existing certified professionals with your company, start now by following the instructions below:

If you have certified staff on board and just haven’t received the credit yet – then please associate them with your partner account. This can be done by logging into the Partner Portal and following the instructions on the Link Certifications page. You can find this page by clicking on ‘Link My Certifications’ under the list of ‘Quick Links’ on the Partner Portal Home Page. You may also go directly to the   Link Certifications page by providing your Partner Portal credentials when prompted.



In the event that you have not yet become certified, you can register for a certification exam today for $200.  Preparatory coursework for certification exams is recommended, but not required. Please review the self-study guide for the consulting certification or Force.com developer certification. Alternatively, enroll in a Force.com developer course or consulting course to really prepare for the exam. Please note that you must already be a certified salesforce.com administrator to take the consulting certification exam. There are no such prerequisites for the developer certification.  For more information, please visit the certification section of our website.

 

Twice a year salesforce.com collects information from our ISV community to determine which partners will receive Registered, Select, and Premier program designation through our ISV partner scorecard survey.

The survey collection is currently under way. Eligible members of our ISV partner program (those with at least one app in market) should have received a link to complete the survey on January 5th. If you fall in this category and have not received a link to complete the survey, please contact your account manager as soon as possible. Program placement only occurs every 6 months, so it is essential you take the survey by January 22nd.

Responses will be collected until January 22nd with results announced on February 1st via the Partner Portal.

Thank your being part of our community!

When I gave the morning keynote to open this week's SaaS University event in Dallas, I kept a promise to the conference organizer to address prospects for SaaS and the cloud in "the Obama economy."

The nature of that economy looks different today than it looked before the Massachusetts election, but some things have not changed: there will, in the next few years, be major new opportunities to develop new applications to streamline medical care; to reduce our energy costs; to improve our access to government services; and to help individuals and enterprises make financial decisions in what's likely to become an inflationary environment.

These are rapidly evolving markets in which the rapid development, rapid deployment, and ease of accessing nationwide (but possibly sparse) markets are all exceptionally suitable for SaaS startups.

My charts are available for download, and I welcome your comments. Bottom line: it's a non-partisan proposition, one of the few still standing, that cloud computing is "the new normal."