Using social media to help ride out the downturn

>> Sumi: Hello, I'm Sumi Das for ZDNet, here with our Senior Editor Sam Diaz, Sam thanks for being

with us today.

>> Sam: Sure, thank you.

>> Sumi: We're at Dream Force 2008 and it's pretty hard to miss, this year it's all about The Cloud a lot of cheerleading around The Cloud

but not everybody's hopping onto the band wagon, what are some of the concerns?

>> Sam: Well, I think that people still have to be sold on The Cloud, ya know, the Internet technology's been around for a long time

but this buzz word, ya know, cloud computing is still relatively new and it's untested and a lot of people are really unsure about the

steps they should take before they jump into The Cloud. Even though the keynote with Michael Dell assumed spelling, he emphasizes

the security that the company is putting on some of their Cloud applications to give that peace of mind to customers that yes, your

data is secure when you store it on the Internet. Ya know, if it's untested in unchartered territory some companies will be afraid

to invest.

>> Sumi: Companies really need to put a lot of trust in The Cloud.

>> Same: That's right, absolutely; it's all about the trust when it comes to The Cloud.

>> Sumi: So, you mentioned Dell, Google has a presence here, Excenture, these are big companies, how does Sales Force tap into what

these companies are doing, what's the common thread?

>> Sam: Well the common thread is the data so Sales Force by definition is in The Cloud, I mean they have basically told companies

and shown companies how they can put valuable information, customer relationships into The Cloud and have access to it no matter where

they are. Now, Sales Force has a lot of data in there because we're telling them a lot about the customer relationships that we have,

what this is allowing them to do is unleash that data, bring it out maybe some of that data belongs in a social networking element

there where they can share data about sales or growth or trends with a social network like Facebook or MySpace or even linked in to

a professional network, I mean there's a lot of ability to unleash that data now and not keep it so internal just for analysis.

>> Sumi: So, give us an example of how people are using social media then.

>> Sam: So, again, going back to Dell, Dell had a presentation where they talked about this thing called Idea Storm and through Idea

Storm, ya know, some of the, especially in tough economic times, some of the best ways to reduce cost or to ride a storm is to cut

back a little bit, that's not always the best idea sometimes it comes down to making minor changes. What you do is you tap the minds

of your audience maybe it's your users, maybe it's your partners, maybe it's just employees within the company itself that have great

ideas through social media platforms like LOGS, Podcasts, video, those sort of things, those ideas can come out and who knows, they

may involve something that the company wants to launch that really doesn't cost a lot to do.

>> Sumi: So is this going to enable companies to -- tech companies to ride through this economic instability that we're in the midst

of right now?

>> Sam: Well I think that's a lot of pressure to put on The Cloud and social media to help them ride through this storm but I think

it can position them to be better when this storm has sort of passed, I mean if they invest in cloud computing right now, if they

invest in the social media tools and approaches right now, when the economy gets better and they're ready for the next wave of business

they're gonna be ready to do all the great things that people are talking about right now.

>> Sumi: You're an optimist Sam, when the economy gets better not if the economy gets better.

>> Sam: It's always gonna get better, very inaudible but it will be back.

>> Sumi: Sam, thank you so much.

>> Sam: Sure, thank you.

>> Sumi: For all the latest you can head to Blogs.ZDNet.com.