Cloud Computing: Salesforce.com’s complexity brings CIOs, partners together

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: John Moore.

When Republic Services sought to retool the systems supporting its national account team, the environmental services company selected Salesforce.com as part of the overhaul-and soon after making that decision, Republic Services hired Bluewolf, a New York-based consulting firm and Salesforce.com partner, for some deployment help.

Bill Halnon, CIO of Republic Services, says his company wanted to work with an experienced hand in the Salesforce.com space. "After selecting the tool, we looked at how we [were] going to implement this," Halnon says. "Even though it is a cloud application, it required some customization and configuration to fit our needs. Just like we would go out and look for an SAP partner, we took the same route with Salesforce.com."…

Republic Services tapped Bluewolf for a range of services, from requirements definitions all the way through implementation and testing, according to Halnon. The company also uses Bluewolf Beyond, a service that Halnon says helps Republic Services maintain its Salesforce.com solution while it works to build up the expertise to support the SaaS app in-house…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/315268/salesforcecoms-complexity-brings-cios-partners-together