Salesforce certainly knows how to deliver a show. And it’s easy to be overwhelmed when there are over 160,000 visitors and 2000 sessions to choose from. But that’s how it is when your goal is to “completely claim the cloud” – you get an event like no other – Dreamforce.
So, now that it is over, here are some of my takeaways and why this event rocked my world:
Salesforce is way more than a CRM. For a while now, almost every business unit in an organization finds something extremely useful in the Salesforce buffet. This was evident throughout the event which was filled to the brim with services that allow for business-needs customizations: myLighting, mySalesforce, myEinstein, myIoT and myTrailhead…
AI is hot. It seems that everybody agrees that AI is the horse to bet on. However you choose to incorporate it into your business flow is entirely up to you, but the direction is clear. Einstein, heavily featured in this year’s conference is said to change the industry. It was hinted that AI tools like Einstein will be able to over-perform humans at some tasks that up until now have been pure human activities. The demos were nothing short of amazing. This tech has come a long way in a very short time. It was nice to see Watson and Einstein getting along.
Lightning is here. It isn’t just beyond the next hill, it’s here. So if you haven’t already switched to Lightning – you are behind schedule and better pick it up.
Partnerships are BIG. Announcements by AWS and Google, two cloud giants, to join hands with Salesforce are leveraging the Salesforce success even further. The strategic partnership with Google to connect with customers by merging the user experiences is going to make things smoother for a whole lot of people. In addition, the AWS-Salesforce collaboration for IoT is yet another prime example of hyper-scale titans teaming up to take technology forward. Exciting, to say the least.
GDPR. GDPR. GDPR. If you attended, you could not escape the fact that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was a relatively big issue. If you are doing business in that part of the world, you should be paying attention because come May of next year these regulations are scheduled to be enforced. Surprisingly enough, even American companies are taking this seriously. According to Michael Spadea of PwC roughly 98% of large US, UK, and Japanese companies with over half a billion dollars in revenue, have indicated GDPR as one of their top priorities. Here at AllCloud, we are working diligently to complete our ISO 27001 certification to help customers address these kinds of security issues.
Salesforce is sharing Trailhead. After its success with Trailhead, Salesforce is now sharing the tech with its customers in the form of myTrailhead. Basically, it’s an online onboarding platform enabling customers to completely customize the learning experience to their needs and brand. How awesome is that? It didn’t stop there. Salesforce is handing out a lot of value in the form of customization. Just look for services that start with “my” in the name.
On the lighter side of Salesforce I can tell you that Alicia Keys got a huge crowd, over 200K individuals, to show up and listen to her music, but somehow managed to miss-deliver. By the time people started leaving, she remembered to start playing her hit songs and disappointed fans heard them from afar. Lenny Kravitz, on the other hand – totally rocked my world at Dreamforce. Totally.
Just like people who stayed at home, I missed out on a lot of interesting and insightful presentations and announcements. I guess that’s why we keep YouTube around. Better start watching.