Dreamforce 2018: What’s next for Salesforce and what it means for their customers
“This is a celebration of you, our trailblazers, and everything you are doing” – said Marc Benioff at his keynote in Dreamforce 2018, proclaiming that the conference is essentially a celebration of the Salesforce customers and their success, rather than the platform. While it is no surprise that a company that transformed the notion of “customer first” would dedicate their largest conference to their customers, it is only when you peel back the onion and look at what comprises a Salesforce customer today, and what their customers will likely look like in the very near future, that you become astounded by how Salesforce is revolutionizing the market again.
Customer 360 and the Revolution of Customer Data Management
Those fighting the crowds at Moscone Center in San Francisco or watching from the comfort of their laptop could not escape the announcements surrounding Salesforce’s Customer 360 initiative, which promises to integrate all data and applications by sitting in the middle of the Salesforce ecosystem and doing away with the master data management tools that other providers are touting as their view on customer 360.
Can Salesforce pull off this, yet again, a new take on an existing problem? Likely. In a recent ZDNet interview, Mark Hawkins, president and CFO of Salesforce, stated that 38% of their 150k+ customers are multi-cloud…meaning 62% are not. And that is a huge market for Salesforce to take on. Salesforce announced that they are planning to use their Mulesoft acquisition to integrate customer data and leave it integrated so that it can be used for customer experiences whether in the cloud or on-prem. So the reality of revolutionizing how companies manage customer data is very much within their grasp.
Multi-Cloud: The Next Frontier
But what’s next? When Salesforce talks about integration and multi-cloud, they generally are talking about their customers using their ever-growing cloud platforms, but many of our own clients are demanding so much more. As a leading cloud solutions provider with expertise across the cloud stack, including cloud applications, infrastructure and platform, we are seeing the value of multi-cloud in a whole new way.
There are several areas in particular where AllCloud sees the market demand headed: IoT enabling companies to be connected to their customers; the enablement of data-driven business decisions; and the enablement of a smart cloud call-center as a service, which is Amazon Connect natively integrated into Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. These AWS-Salesforce integrations could represent a whole new level of multi-cloud and the next step in the market revolution that Salesforce is leading.
Long gone are the days when organizations looked at implementing Salesforce simply for sales force automation. As Salesforce continues to expand its offerings and take on new frontiers, the face of their customers will continue to evolve, as will the complexity of the implementations. The ecosystem just better be ready to keep up with the demand!