Welcome Back and Goodbye?

Hello, welcome back, and goodbye?

Welcome to the first entry in the Bob Buzzard Stack - thanks for reading!

Salesforce Ecosystem

Is it goodbye from him? The rumour mill suggests that Marc Benioff may be considering handing over the CEO reins to Bret Taylor. If this is indeed the case it will be a stellar ascent of the greasy pole. Benioff does really seem to like Taylor though, making the point back in 2016 that one reason for acquiring Quip was to work more closely with him. Whether he likes him enough to trust him with his life’s work remains to be seen. Maybe they will try the co-CEO route again, although that didn’t pan out as many of us expected.

The data recovery service is back by popular demand! Probably not what the army of backup solution providers wanted to hear as they revelled in the opportunity opened up when Salesforce officially retired it in July 2020. I’d imagine a large number of Salesforce customers want a safety net rather than something they will regularly restore from, and this return of the service mean they’ve got it without taking any action. It’s also highly cost effective - nothing down and nothing a month until you need to use it, at which point all the bills come due. But that might never happen, so stick it on the laterbase.

March has started out as a month of acquisitions - PolSource to EPAM, Cloudshift to Globant and Make Positive to Sabio Group. I’d expect a few more in the short term, as corporates are often a herd animal and some companies with aspirations to grow will be panicking that there won’t be anyone left to acquire.

Remote Work

The UK Government changed its stance on remote working, after finding that offering flexibility in this area results in a significant increase in applications.

I can understand why the old ways of working are still attractive to governments, as they support so many additional jobs - property, transport, catering, hospitality. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle though, so the affected industries will have to adapt. I don’t remember state campaigns to keep people using film cameras or buying physical books.

Writing

As I’ve written on the Bob Buzzard Blog, when to blog is very much a personal choice. Tom Keugler is someone who tries to blog every day, and here is one of his ideas to make that happen - less is more.

Reflection

I originally intended to write one post a month, but so much is happening that I’m posting after a week. Tom Keugler advises writing shorter posts, and a month’s worth would be a huge ask of anyone to read.

I’ve got a lockdown week off now, so it’s possible I’ll ramp up!