The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Loudon Wainwright III's great live album Career Moves:

Wow, it's, like, so unlike salesforce.com to announce good news, we're surprised here at First Coffee to see the normally media-shy, reticent founder, Marc Benioff, out in front blowing the company's horn announcing results for its fiscal second quarter ended July 31, 2006.

"As we soar past the half-million paying subscriber mark, we stand on the cusp of another remarkable achievement: a half-billion dollar annual run rate. These are historic milestones for salesforce.com and the industry that we are leading," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com in a rare public appearance. "Few software companies achieve this scale and momentum."

As the company heads towards one million subscribers and one billion dollars in revenue, Benioff, clearly uncomfortable in the spotlight, said he wants "to thank our 24,800 customers, partners, and our 1,625 employees for creating this amazing community of success on the Business Web."

Salesforce.com's announced results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2007include total revenue of $118 million, an increase of 64% on a year- over- year basis and an increase of 13% on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Subscription and support revenues were $106.7 million, an increase of 63% on a year-over-year basis and an increase of 13% on a quarter-to-quarter basis. 

Professional services and other revenues were doing well, $11.5 million, an increase of 82% on a year-over-year basis and an increase of 13% on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

The rub is in Earnings per Share: GAAP earnings per share were "approximately break- even," company officials said, noting that non-GAAP earnings per diluted share, excluding the effects of stock based compensation and amortization of purchased intangibles related to acquisitions, were $0.06. 

Net paying subscribers rose approximately 57,000 during Q2 to exit the quarter at approximately 501,000 total subscribers, an increase of 63% from Q2 of the prior year, and an increase of 13% from the prior quarter. 

Customers rose approximately 2,100 during the quarter and totaled approximately 24,800, an increase of 47% from Q2 of the prior year, and an increase of 9% from the prior quarter.

Based on information as of August 16, 2006, salesforce.com is initiating guidance for its third quarter fiscal 2007 ending October 31, 2006, and updating guidance for its full fiscal year 2007 ending January 31, 2007.

Q3 FY07: Revenue for the company's third fiscal quarter is projected to be in the range of approximately $126 million to approximately $128 million. Non-GAAP diluted EPS is expected to be in the range of approximately $0.04 to $0.05, and GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of approximately break-even to a loss of $0.02 for the third quarter.

WebMethods, Inc., a business software vendor, has announced an OEM agreement between webMethods K.K., the company's wholly-owned Japanese subsidiary, and Canon Inc.

Under the agreement covering the Japanese market, Canon is embedding webMethods technology as a standard feature within its imageWARE Enterprise Gateway, which is the company's data transaction product for connecting Canon's input and output products with a variety of back-end systems.

Canon is using webMethods as an integration standard for linking its input and output product to a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Andy Wilkinson, senior vice president and General Manager, Asia/Pacific & Japan, webMethods, Inc., said partnering with Canon's imageWARE Enterprise Gateway "will allow organizations to more quickly and easily implement and automate document workflow."

As a result of the linkages, documents like invoices, purchase orders and payments can automatically entered into each system, and these systems can be linked directly to a variety of digital outputs

Revonet, Inc., a B2B Direct Marketing Company, has announced public availability of its Leads-On-Demand product, which uses market research and database segmentation to identify best prospects and "then makes thousands of phone calls to discover companies that are in the market for purchasing VoIP and telecommunications services."

These leads are then transferred in real time through the LOD product to a select group of vendors "capable of servicing the interested company. Each lead has specifically requested to be contacted by a sales representative and contains very specific information detailing the opportunity," Revonet officials claim.

Each sales lead includes the full customer profile including contact names, addresses, phone numbers, as well as contract size, expiration date and other helpful data. The records can be quickly and efficiently shared or fed into any number of existing CRM systems.

Starting today, Revonet is offering interested customers the ability to test 5 leads at no charge. Vendors can sign up for a subscription to Leads-On-Demand for as low as $75 per lead.

The Leads-On-Demand product is focused on prospects that spend between $500 and $5,000 in Monthly Recurring Charges for data and telephone services.

FYI: Some company calling itself "SalesGuru.com" has announced that their software is 91% less expensive than Salesforce.com.

"How does SalesGuru.com manage to offer prices significantly lower than all other CRM companies?" company officers ask rhetorically. Gee, glad you asked:

SalesGuru.com charges a fee per company as opposed to individual user. "Other CRM applications, including Salesforce.com, Sugarcrm.com, and Salesnet.com charge on a per person basis, which means that whenever a company increases the size of their sales team, their fee also increases," SalesGuru officials say.

Businesses "can be assured," however, that "regardless of how many sales representatives they have, they will only pay one flat-rate at SalesGuru.com."

And of course company officials express the hope that "we are also likely to see an increasing number of companies abandon on-demand services like Salesforce.com in favor of SalesGuru.com."

Sometimes one brilliant bit of clarity explains everything. The BBC reports:

"A survey for the newspaper La Croix found that seven French people out of ten supported the deployment of an international force. However only a small majority -- 53% -- were in favor of the French military getting involved."

Something needs to be done? Oui! Military action? Oui! Us French the ones to accept the responsibility and do something meaningful? Non!

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