George Kadifa, the general manager of IBM’s on-demand group, said something that may not have ever been uttered before. He said Marc Benioff was pessimistic.

Salesforce.com CEO Benioff, the world’s most active on-demand software evangelist, has been called a lot of things, but pessimistic is not one of them.

In comments made during a panel at the Always On conference this afternoon, Kadifa said that Benioff’s focus on on-demand software underestimates the customer need to buy processes and systems in addition to the software. He pointed to Paychex, an online payroll processor, that provides payroll services and software.

Kadifa’s parting shot was to note that Paychex has a market capitalization eight times larger than Salesforce.com’s despite the fact that most people have never heard about it.

For more on the Always On conference, see:
Always On Webcast
BlogHer

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