Monday was a week in itself at this year's Dreamforce. From the initial 3 hour keynote (with roughly 5 major announcements - 2 of which included work from Appirio: Facebook innovation and our Force.com Sites development for Harrah's), to the 11 independent sessions we participated in alone, to the hundreds of visitors to the Appirio Booth, to the hack-a-thon, and finally the amazing Foo Fighters concert. It was a busy Monday, and for good reason too.

At Appirio, we're now at the stage where it's almost becoming complicated to explain how we address our mission statement of accelerating the adoption of on-demand. The reason being is that the tools we're using to complete this aggressive task are so incredibly powerful that they allow us to provide innovation at a pace unprecedented in the industry:

• Deliver incredible custom work on web platforms quickly - taking the services discussion from "Months" to "Weeks"
  
• Rapidly deploy new products which address immediate business need, and help turn individual services and platforms into one seamless, powerful cloud

Each of these statements can lead to hour-long converstations on how cloud computing can drastically change a business, and trying to wrap that into a brief booth visit can be cumbersome.

One customer from a world's leading document management organization that dropped by our booth yesterday was clearly interested in learning more about how cloud computing could positively change his business. Yet, as we talked, it became clear that the whole notion can get fairly complicated, and the conversation can become a folly of buzzwords unless truely focused on the individual's need. Though cloud computing is something we're passionate about, it is still just gaining traction in the enterprise, and we not only have to address that concept, but also address our contributions to it. Finally, after realizing that his organization would be a fantastic candidate for our Professional Service Essentials product, he asked this question:

"How are you able to do so much?"

The answer, in my humble opinion, is speed. The power of the platforms we build on is that they allow us to immediately effect business need. Our services are delivered in an order of magnitude faster. Our products are delivered in an order of magnitude faster. Everything we do is faster than anything being done in traditional software. There are plenty of other benefits to cloud computing, but much of the business value comes when we discuss the speed of our service and product deployments.

Ironically, it's that same speed that leads to so much innovation, that you find yourself sitting through a monsterous Monday Dreamforce Keynote and wondering what it all means. Or at a booth overwhelmed by buzzwords. It's our job now to provide not only the rapid innovation that cloud computing allows, but also a clear path to how that innovation can effect businesses. That's our goal at this year's Dreamforce, and it's why events like these are so important. Here's to Tuesday!