In The Next Version

On Wed June 6th I (along with a reported 2500 others) attended Salesforce's Cloudforce event in Toronto. I go to a lot of conferences and I have to say this was one of the best I've been to. I found it to be an extremely well executed conference; the facility (Allstream Center), staff and most importantly the keynotes and breakout sessions were all top notch. What I liked most about the keynote is that Cloudforce followed a few simple rules:

• Keynotes should be delivered by good presenters, regardless of what their corporate title is.
• Stick to telling your story, not bad mouthing the competition.
• Do live product demonstrations (not recorded. not slides) to support the statements being made.
• Perhaps most importantly, highlight customer stories.

As you can see below, Salesforce showcased several customers throughout the morning.  I'm even missing a few such as Burberry, Symantec, and Spotify. The point being, let customers be your proof points, not marketing slides or self-promotion. An especially nice touch was that they tailored the show to the audience, providing local stories including TD Bank, Canada Post and Research In Motion.






The keynote focused on how organizations can transform themselves into a Social Enterprise. This means a company who actively engages with their customers and employees.  The Salesforce portfolio that supports this is divided up into the following categories and products:

• Collaborate: Chatter
• Work: Rypple  (I'm not sure of work is the right title)
• Extend: Force.com, Database.com, AppExchange, Remedyforce (which is IT Help Desk, so I'm not sure why it's not listed under service)
• Sell: Sales Cloud, Data.com
• Service: Service Cloud
• Market: Radian6, Sites.com, Heroku

It's impressive how far Salesforce has evolved from their origins of "cloud based CRM", which by the way was barely shown at all. One item that is missing from the list above (and from the event) is Do.com, their social task management tool.  I expect to see Do.com become more of a core component of Chatter, so we'll see what announcements are made at DreamForce in a few months.

One of my favourite parts of the keynote was the demonstration of their social media monitoring capabilities via Radian6. They asked the audience to tweet photos using the hashtag #cloudforce and in real time we could see the messages being pulled into Salesforce. This was an impressive way to showcase the technology.



I was also thrilled to see Salesforce Rypple play such a big part in the day. Rypple (based in Toronto) who was acquired by Salesforce in December of 2011 enables organizations to transform their old boring employee review processes into a dynamic and social experiences. From goal setting, to coaching, to rewards and recognition Rypple is helping redefine the outdated HR functions and turn them into more engagement experience for employees and managers.

I'm disappointed there was no mention of this week's acquisition of Buddy Media. I know the deal occurred just a few days before the event, but I would have liked it to have been addressed.

I also would have liked to have seen all attendees added to a Cloudforce Toronto Chatter group.  This would be the ultimate sales tool, showing everyone how they can connect to other attendees and the Salesforce presenters, as well as access and discuss the presentations.  I've been told they do this for Dreamforce with is clearly a much larger event, so I'm surprised this was not done here.

Some Summary Points

• Chatter continues to get better at quite a rapid pace. Salesforce is doing a nice job of marketing it not as "social software" but instead an improved way of working with people and business objects such as presentations, sales opportunity records, customer support tickets, etc.
• Force.com and the AppExchange is a very strong cloud based platform for creating a variety of applications, and they don't need to have anything to do with CRM. For example, we were shown a demo of an application Kimberly-Clark built on Force.com that allows employees to use iPads to monitor and record the health conditions at their warehouses.
• I'm looking forward to seeing how the integration of Rypple continues to evolve, in particular how it becomes a core part of the Salesforce UI and experience. (Chatter, profiles, Do, etc)
• Salesforce has been on quite the buying spree (Heroku, Radian6, Buddy Media) around marketing tools that help organizations engage with their customers. I expect we'll see many more dollars spent in this area during the months leading up to Dreamforce.

My final take away from the event is that I could not help but notice how positive the energy was. At many events the customers, press and analysts have a bit of cynicism to their tone, but Cloudforce was completely upbeat.  People in attendance seemed to feel like their were hanging out with the cool kids.  I know that's not the most technical analysis, but I feel it's an important point to make.