SFDC Professional Edition customers - sync change alert - please read!

[Erica_Harris2]

I have posted this in the general discussion about sync changes but Grégoire Michel​ suggested I start a new discussion here for maximum visibility as it could potentially affect all PE customers using Marketo.

Historically, SFDC allowed Professional Edition customers to integrate with Marketo without a specific API subscription in SFDC, as they have done with a number of AppExchange products, but now appearing to be withdrawing this from Marketo. This is causing real issues with my Professional Edition customers.

I have just had a worrying conversation with our SFDC account manager.  We had a note just before Christmas from our Marketo account manager telling us that we would need to purchase API access in order to continue to sync to SFDC after the end of January.  However, when speaking to the SFDC account manager, he tells me that API access for Professional Edition only allows one-way access, i.e. into SFDC, so would not allow us to sync bi-directionally. 

SFDC tells me they are doing this because Marketo is a competitive product to Pardot.

SFDC are telling me that it is not possible to purchase 2-way API access for the Professional Edition.  The rep stressed that only 1-way access is provided to PE customers. This is really major - it will affect ALL Marketo customers using the Professional Edition. SFDC are more or less forcing us to upgrade to Enterprise, which will cost a bomb for a small R&D company.

Are other PE customers hearing this from SFDC? Is our rep telling the truth about API access for PE only being one way?

I would appreciate other PE customers weighing in here after speaking to their SFDC account managers!

Thanks,

Erica

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI again Erica,

Copying here some of the comments I made on the other thread, and adding a couple:

• List price for EE is 2 times list price for PE.
• Yet, Salesforce cannot just cut this as they want. People have contracts, some of them multi-year contracts, and the products delivered cannot be changed at least until the contract is ended. So if someone can be hit by this in January, it's only those whose contract will be renewed now, or customers who just want to acquire the API now.
• I am investigating on my side of the ocean and I'll keep you posted, but here in France, no one has ever got the API on PE for free. It's being charged an additional 30% on top of the PE licence.
• Also, and that's my personal experience, when SFDC stops something, it only impacts new customers, not existing one. I, for instance benefit from the old FREE self service portal that has been discontinued 3 years ago, but since we have been renewing our contract for 7 years now, we still get it.
• The fact that Marketo is a competitive product to Pardot is really not a good argument: the API can be used for any third party product. It's documentation is completely public and SFDC cannot control what one is using the API for. Furthermore, legally, in the EU, you cannot refuse to sell the API to 1 customer and agree to sell it to another. So if SFDC wants to stop the product, they will have to do it for everyone. This means that simply interrupting the API for all PE customers would not just drive mad Marketo customers, but thousands of SFDC customers using the API for any other purpose, excepted Marketing automation. Not a very good move if you want my take. This would end up upgrading everyone to the EE for the price of the PE and opening a very large door to salesforce alternatives

So all this seems quite weird, even may be is it a personal initiative of a not so ethical sales person.

-Greg

[Erica_Harris2]

Hi Grégoire Michel​,

However, if we aren't actually paying for the API, then we haven't got API access. My understanding was they exposed the API to Marketo for PE customers and are now pulling this access. So it wasn't the customer that got API access, it was Marketo for their integration.

I know that there are other AppExchange integrations available with the Professional Edition that you don't (as the customer) have to have API access, that use this same mechanism. My understanding from the SFDC rep was that they were pulling this from Marketo, not from other partners. I may be wrong, but this is what the rep said when I asked if this was the same for all AppExchange products that integrated with the PE.

One of the reasons that I posted this was in the hope that other customers have had a more helpful response from SFDC and I could use this as leverage. I want to hear that what the rep said is not true - especially as 1-way API access sounds very suspect to me.

- Erica

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Second though on this,

It might simply be a misunderstanding from the sales rep. The API on PE is not as complete as the one on EE. It is simply the external soap API that enables a third party app to connect to SFDC, and you do not get the APEX code that includes the capability for SFDC to connect to a third party app. In that sense, the SOAP API could be qualified as a one way API or lite API.

But this SOAP API does enable data to flow both ways and is just what Marketo connector needs, and PE customers are just OK with it.

-Greg

[Erica_Harris2]

I really hope this is the case! I'll wait for Mike Reynolds​ to report back after his research.

Really appreciate your input -

- Erica

[Grégoire_Miche2]

A agree with you, this 1-way thing is really suspect...

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

BtW, this is what Marketo own doc says for SFDC PE:

-Greg

[hena_wells · Accepted solution]

Erica Harris ,

A clarification on the one-way/2-way thing. The Marketo integration with sf.com is bi-directional. But, we manage this bi-directional integration from the MKTO side. At a high level:

- We use the sf.com API (from Marketo to sf.com) to ask what has changed in sf.com and then update MKTO

- We use the sf.com API (also from Marketo to sf.com) to update/create sf.com records based on changes and workflow in MKTO

In both these cases, we use the API's into sf.com to manage the integration. We do not need to make any calls from sf.com into MKTO.

Please let us know if any clarification is needed.

Aj

[Grégoire_Miche2]

What I wrote 1 hour ago

Obviously, the SFDC sales rep is a little zealous...

-Greg

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Erica Harris​ Grégoire Michel​

I've been getting more details and I was mistaken in the other thread. The Marketo > SFDC integration only needs one-way API calls. All of the data transferred through the standard integration goes through the API calls that are generated from Marketo. No API calls are generated by SFDC, so you do only need the one-way API calls.

-Mike