Revisiting IT industry
I left the IT industry in 2003 after spending 14 years
working my way up from a programmer to an IT Project Manager. Recently, I was
asked to attend Salesforce event at
MBS. I have never heard of Salesforce
prior to the event. I started to research on the company. This is what was
found in Wikipedia.
Salesforce Company
Salesforce Inc.
is a global cloud computing company
headquartered in San Francisco, California. Though best known for its customer
relationship management (CRM) product, Salesforce has also expanded into
commercial applications of social networking through acquisition.[6] Forbes
magazine ranked it the most innovative company in America in 2012,[7] and it
ranked 19th in Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2013.
The company was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive
Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez as a company
specializing in software as a service (SaaS). I do have one thing in common
with the founder Marc Benioff, we knew Oracle. I have been working on Oracle
programming, databases and systems for at least 12 years. In June 2004, the
company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol CRM,
raising US$110 million. That also explain why I never heard of SalesForce since
I left the IT industry in 2003.
Dreamforce Conference
Salesforce hold the world’s largest software conference,
Dreamforce which was attended by 140,000 registered attendees. Dreamforce was
held in Moscone Center in San Francisco from October 13-16, 2014. In addition,
an estimated five million viewers watched on Salesforce Live to understand the
company vision on the future of enterprise software and the Customer Success
Platform.
Giving Back to Society
Salesforce took the opportunity to run charity events during
the Dreamforce . This include, fight hunger ( attendees each bring a can food
to Dreamforce Plaza ), Help Children’s Hospital, Support Veterans.
The New Customer Success Platform
We are entering a new world of computing where everything is
connected. Mobile phones will soon be in the hands of 70 percent of the world’s
population and billions of apps on mobile devices are sending massive amounts
of data to the cloud. In the last two years alone, 90 percent of the world’s
data was created as cloud, social, mobile and connected technologies
transformed business models and consumer behaviour. The future is trillions of
customer interactions every day.
To succeed in the future, every company needs
a platform to capture and personalize every customer interaction, to connect
with customers in a whole new way. With all these changes and requirements,
Salesforce new platform was introduced.
The Salesforce
Customer Success Platform brings together ground-breaking cloud apps for
sales, service, marketing, community, and now analytics, all on the Salesforce1
Platform. It provides both a system of record and a system of engagement for
companies of every size and industry. Now anyone can run their business from a
phone and every company can grow sales faster, deliver customer service
everywhere, create 1:1 customer journeys, engage with customers in vibrant
communities, deliver analytics for every business user and build mobile apps
lightning fast, all from a single trusted platform built for customer success.
Introducing Wave, The Analytics Cloud
Wave, the Salesforce Analytics Clould is the first cloud
analytics platform designed for every business user, making it easier than ever
for anyone to explore data, uncover new insights and take action instantly from
any device. Companies can now quickly deploy sales, service and marketing
analytics, or build custom mobile analytics apps, using any data
source—empowering everyone to make smarter decisions from anywhere. Wave is
designed for business users, not just analysts.
Wave ecosystem partners comprises of Integration Leaders,
System Integration Leaders and ISV Leaders. To name some of them, namely Accenture,
Deloitte Digital and Informatica were present to showcase how companies can
extend analytics for any business need.
• Wave Analytics Cloud is expected to be generally available
in English, with additional language support forthcoming.
• The Wave mobile app will initially be available on Apple
iOS for iPhone and iPad, with additional device support forthcoming.
• The Wave Platform license includes all compute, data
management, API and security infrastructure. Monthly subscription pricing for
the Wave Platform is based on the number of Wave Explorer and Wave Builder
licenses.
• The Wave Explorer license includes the ability to view,
discover, personalize and share data insights and dashboards. Pricing starts at
$125 per user per month.
• The Wave Builder license includes the ability to create,
deploy and manage data sets, data connections and user access. Pricing starts
at $250 per user per month.
Salesforce Launches Salesforce1 Lightning
The Fastest Way to Build Mobile Apps
New Salesforce1 Lightning, the next generation of the
Salesforce1 Platform, empowers anyone to quickly build the innovative mobile
apps that every company needs.
Leading companies like Brown-Forman, Philips and Seagate are
building apps faster on the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to help every
customer, partner and employee move at the speed of business.
More information on Salesforce ;
- Learn more about Salesforce1 Lightning: Lightning
- Learn more about the Salesforce1 Mobile App: Mobile
- Like Salesforce on Facebook: http://facebook.com/salesforce
- Follow @Salesforce on Twitter: http://twitter.com/salesforce
Opinion
After more than 10 years of absence in the IT industry, there
seems to be a big change in the way, Information Technology was implemented on the businesses. Instead of expensive software implemented in the legacy system, the offerings
of subscription basis enable affordability, allowing more businesses to access to
the salesforce platform.
Connectivity on a global level contributes to better
customers relationship as well as a deeper understanding of customers’ needs.
With all the companies working together on Salesforce platform, information
flow seamlessly with minimum hiccups.
Another notable thing is the speed of development. The
ability to create apps fast and customize to business users needs is a huge gain
to companies. Faster software development and implementation allow timely and useful
information for business users. This is a big leap in improvement over the traditional
systems.
All this is possible with use of Cloud computing technology. It is the
third IT revolution, and radically altering the way people communicate with each
other, businesses deployment and consumption of IT resources.
Nice post Derrick. Wow! "Trillions of customer interactions every day".. That's truly amazing and the figure itself is so huge. It goes to show how 'well connected' our gobal village has become. Both pros and cons though, but that's just the way the world is in this era of time. Me for one is typing away in my little gadget (phone) right now so I have contributed to the statistic! Lol
ReplyDeleteI was quite intriqued with the 'watch' image you have put up. Real cool I found.
As for Cloud based. Personally, I am not sure how safe n secure it is. What's your view regarding this? :)
Thanks Sandy for your comments. Yes, indeed, you have contributed to the statistics...Your little gadget (phone) is a big thing in today communication. They are integrating almost every available mobile gadgets, watches, tablets, smart phones you can think of in a seamless manner. The lady demonstrating the "watch" was pulling information from the cloud on a wearable device. At the time of visit, it was still on pilot testing.
DeleteTechnology keep changing every year. It gets better and better. I remember in the early 2000, it was such a big thing to have a specialised mobile device ( look a bit like a tablet, that's before ipad came out ) used in large installation. Information was required on hand to execute their work on a real time basis.
As for your question on Cloud based security. Well I am not a cloud expert but as a past personnel work in IT industry, no matter how safe is the security implementation, there will always be someone breaking it. It is just a matter of time. Security watchdogs and new security measures will continuously be monitored and created.