Salesforce.com CEO: “Don’t Get Drunk on the Stock Price”

In a recent interview with CNBC, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that his company’s motto was “Don’t get drunk on the stock price.”

C’mon, Marc: What else is there to get drunk on?

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Oracle head honcho Larry Ellison “survived” the company’s annual shareholder meeting unscathed: His desire for a 38 percent pay raise was approved and didn’t receive that much grumbling from the shareholders.

The third-richest man in America did receive some flattering praise from CIO.com: A recent article likened him to The Simpson’s Mr. Burns. “Money fight!”

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New survey data from Forrester Research’s astute analyst Ray Wang showed that SAP customers, who are facing the new 22 percent maintenance fee, are just not seeing the value of the price hike, and are none too happy about it.

“While the new model does offer some new benefits like upgrade support and end-to-end operations support, many of the customers with whom Forrester has spoken already question the value of their existing Basic Support contracts at 17%.”

“Of the 203 customers interviewed leading up to this report, 85% expressed minimal utilization of the existing Basic Support offerings.”

How’s that for value!

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Not to keep badgering SAP, but its top execs told employees last week to hold off on those new IT purchases. “We will review all planned investments in IT equipment, hardware, software, facilities, and company cars, as well as internal IT projects,” wrote SAP’s co-CEOs to their employees in an e-mail. “Do not order any new equipment at this time.”

Hey SAP: Is that something that SAP customers should be doing as well? Thought not.

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Nintendo recently announced that there would be a “significant increase” in shipments of the insanely popular Wii videogame consoles for the upcoming holiday season, all to avoid the Christmas catastrophes and PR nightmares of the previous two holiday shopping seasons.

As CIO.com recounted in “Nintendo Wii Shortage: Shrewd Marketing or Flawed Supply Chain?”, executives and supply chain planners at the Japanese-based company have their work cut out for them.

Now, for those who have it, Wii bowling anyone?

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This week’s “Sign That the Apocalypse Is Upon Us: High-Tech PR Edition” includes two items.

The first is a gem that SAP sent to me:

SAP Launches SAPŽ EcoHub, a Community-Powered Solution Marketplace

For those of you playing Buzzword Bingo, you just WON!!

The second comes courtesy of a BPM provider’s PR staffer, who was looking to set up a meeting:

****As a compensation for your time, we’ll donate $100 in your name to your favorite charity*****

Really? Things are that bad?