When I was at Oracle, we watched Computer Associates buy all those mainframe software companies and milk them for their license revenue. I never thought that's what Oracle would be doing one day, and yet, here it is,

What if there was an eBay of applications, where companies could buy and sell software, running on our platform? ... What if there was an iTunes Music Store of online applications?

[Benioff contends that this approach will eventually change the entire structure of his industry. Software over the Web -- commonly called on-demand -- accounted for less than 10% of the $46 billion in corporate software sold last year. But he says creating an open marketplace for on-demand software will help cause the decline of the big, complex, and expensive corporate applications sold by the likes of SAP ( SAP ) and Oracle Corp. ( ORCL ).] It's a big leap for us, ... We think it will show the world the next step for on-demand computing, just as we showed the world the first step.

We determined that part of the problem was with software we were getting from an outside vendor, and we're continuing to improve the experience. But we're telling our customers to expect a three- to five-day wait [for the port]. You need to be realistic.

You must always be able to predict what's next and then have the flexibility to evolve.

Although I loved working on technology - I've always been a computer geek at heart - my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.