Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

Sometimes it does take a village. Yesterday’s product development would have been a bunch of developers, with lot’s of diet coke, cheese burgers and very late days and nights programming like crazy. But today, product development has changed. How? More and more companies are collaborating. Why? It does take a village to create internal collaboration employee experiences and external-facing customer experiences that even begin to meet what people want.

And that’s what is significant about today’s announcement about Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce’s plans to extend their strategic partnership to connect the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to Microsoft Office productivity apps and services. The two leaders plan to deliver new solutions that integrate Salesforce with Skype for Business, OneNote, Delve and Windows 10 to empower companies to connect with their customers and collaborate more effectively.

What possibilities does the collaboration bring to the table? Microsoft and Salesforce have committed to working together to bring the following solutions to life:

Skype for Business Integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience: Salesforce will integrate Skype for Business (formerly known as Lync) into its new Lightning Experience, a modern and re-imagined Salesforce that combines an intelligent new user experience with proven best practices that enable people to work faster and smarter. Office 365 customers will be able to use Skype for Business to create Web meetings, determine if colleagues are online or not, click to chat and make voice and video calls from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
OneNote Integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience: Users will be able to associate notes with Salesforce records, and view and edit notes directly in OneNote from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

Salesforce Integration with Office Graph and Office Delve: Enabled by the Office Graph, an open ecosystem for sharing, collaboration and discovery, Office 365 users will be able to view and discover Salesforce content in Office Delve, such as sales opportunities, customer accounts and service cases. Availability is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10: Salesforce will deliver a Windows 10 app to empower sales teams to move deals forward while on the go, using their favorite Windows device. Availability is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

What are some of the comments on this collaboration?

“Customer success is at the heart of everything we do at Salesforce, including our partnership with Microsoft,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “Our collaboration has been so successful, now we’re doubling down and delivering even more innovation that will help our mutual customers be more productive and connect with their customers in a whole new way.”
“Furthering our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more, is the motivating force behind our partnership with Salesforce,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corp. “As a platform and productivity company, we are focused on bringing together the best of Microsoft Azure, Office and Windows with partners like Salesforce to empower our mutual customers to network, collaborate, communicate and discover information in more effective ways.”

“As a global company with more than 400 brands, we are always looking for ways to strengthen collaboration across departments and take the complexity out of work,” said Paulo De Sa, VP Employee Services Technology, Unilever. “Together, Salesforce and Microsoft Office are helping us create an integrated digital workplace where our 170,000+ employees around the world can be more productive and connect with each other and with customers like never before.”

The Two Companies Are Building on a Foundation of Success
These new integrations will build on existing joint solutions that enable mutual customers to be more productive than ever before, including:

Salesforce Files Connect integration with SharePoint and OneDrive for Business
Salesforce Wave Connector for Excel
Salesforce integration with Power Query for Excel
Salesforce Mobile SDK for Windows
Salesforce1 for Windows 8.1 Phone Preview
Power BI for Office 365 integration with Salesforce.

My POV: I am very happy to see collaboration at this level. For two reasons. One is reducing attrition. Millennials have expectations of work that the Baby Boomers didn’t. At least up until now. Now even Baby Boomers want more from their workplace. And the second reason is because customers want an experience that is going to keep them from defecting. Instead of trying to dominate the marketplace, these two companies see the wisdom in the collaboration. Never before does 1 + 1 = 6. Did I add that wrong? Nope. What I mean by that is, in the name of collaboration, the value is exponential to all those involved.

To Learn more about the partnership visit: http://www.salesforce.com/microsoft

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

The Salesforce Dreamforce event is happening in San Francisco, and a number of key news are coming out of the event, todays was a joint announcement of Microsoft and Salesforce.

So let’s dissect it in our custom style, the press release can be found here:

SAN FRANCISCO—DREAMFORCE 2015—Sept. 16, 2015—Today Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) announced plans to extend their strategic partnership to connect the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to Microsoft Office productivity apps and services. The two leaders plan to deliver new solutions that integrate Salesforce with Skype for Business, OneNote, Delve and Windows 10 to empower companies to connect with their customers and collaborate more effectively.

MyPOV – Well that sums it up pretty well. Both vendors are partnering to help customers and Microsoft is brining key productivity / collaboration assets to Salesforce users. Joint customer see immediate value from this partnership.

Microsoft and Salesforce continue to deliver on their strategic partnership with the general availability of two new integrations announced in October 2014: Salesforce App for Outlook, which works with Outlook 2013 and Office 365, and Salesforce1 Mobile App for Microsoft Office.

MyPOV – Always good to see continuity of a partnership, this first partnership deliverable has almost been forgotten, but good to be reminded. Even better if we knew what the uptake in the market has been.

New Integrations to Make Joint Customers More Productive Than Ever Before Microsoft and Salesforce have committed to working together to bring the following solutions to life:
· Skype for Business Integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience: Salesforce will integrate Skype for Business (formerly known as Lync) into its new Lightning Experience, a modern and re-imagined Salesforce that combines an intelligent new user experience with proven best practices that enable people to work faster and smarter. Office 365 customers will be able to use Skype for Business to create Web meetings, determine if colleagues are online or not, click to chat and make voice and video calls from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

MyPOV Good to see Microsoft being early in getting to the latest Salesforce experience with Lightning. Good for Office 365 users who now can do more from Salesforce. Avoiding context switches is always valuable for time pressured business users. Surprising that there is no mention of Salesforce Chatter, which would have been another intuitive entry point in my view.

· OneNote Integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience: Users will be able to associate notes with Salesforce records, and view and edit notes directly in OneNote from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

MyPOV – An interesting announcement, consistent to the strategy of Microsoft to move OneNote ‘everywhere’. The ETA for the solution is remarkably far out with 2nd half of 2016. It will also be interesting to see where the OneNote information will be stored – on the Salesforce cloud or the Microsoft / Azure / Office365 cloud – which has both performance and compliance implications.

· Salesforce Integration with Office Graph and Office Delve: Enabled by the Office Graph, an open ecosystem for sharing, collaboration and discovery, Office 365 users will be able to view BN and discover Salesforce content in Office Delve, such as sales opportunities, customer accounts and service cases. Availability is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

MyPOV – Good to see more recent Microsoft innovations like Graph and Delve being part of this partnership announcement. Enabling information from Salesforce to reach them is good step forward for a richer user experience and will result in better uptake for these newer products. And same as above – less content switching, logging in and logging out for business users.

· Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10: Salesforce will deliver a Windows 10 app to empower sales teams to move deals forward while on the go, using their favorite Windows device. Availability is anticipated in the second half of 2016.

MyPOV – This was a holdout on the Salesforce portfolio. Good to see Salesforce1 coming to Windows 10. Interesting Salesforce is not building a Windows Universal App (or its not mentioned here) something that should work well for these needs.

Comments on the News:
· “Customer success is at the heart of everything we do at Salesforce, including our partnership with Microsoft,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “Our collaboration has been so successful, now we’re doubling down and delivering even more innovation that will help our mutual customers be more productive and connect with their customers in a whole new way."
· “Furthering our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more, is the motivating force behind our partnership with Salesforce,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corp. “As a platform and productivity company, we are focused on bringing together the best of Microsoft Azure, Office and Windows with partners like Salesforce to empower our mutual customers to network, collaborate, communicate and discover information in more effective ways.”
· "As a global company with more than 400 brands, we are always looking for ways to strengthen collaboration across departments and take the complexity out of work,” said Paulo De Sa, VP Employee Services Technology, Unilever. “Together, Salesforce and Microsoft Office are helping us create an integrated digital workplace where our 170,000+ employees around the world can be more productive and connect with each other and with customers like never before.”

MyPOV – Powerful statements by all three gentlemen, Benioff with a focus on ‘the customer must win’ and more productivity Nadella on the ‘Office everywhere theme’ and De Sa on a joint customer being delighted.

Building on a Foundation of Success These new integrations will build on existing joint solutions that enable mutual customers to be more productive than ever before, including:
· Salesforce Files Connect integration with SharePoint and OneDrive for Business
· Salesforce Wave Connector for Excel
· Salesforce integration with Power Query for Excel
· Salesforce Mobile SDK for Windows
· Salesforce1 for Windows 8.1 Phone Preview
· Power BI for Office 365 integration with Salesforce

MyPOV – Always good to see what partnership products have been released already.

Overall MyPOV

Good move by both Salesforce and Microsoft to integrate their products better. When vendors do that, the business user is the winner, resulting in higher productivity and usage of their familiar applications. Another data point validating the ‘new’ Microsoft and the ‘OneNote’ everywhere strategy. Salesforce users get more productive and the vendor is showing it can partner with all major technology vendors.

On the concern side I am surprised by the almost (at least) twelve months out delivery dates – a very far horizon in these days of cloud based and delivered products. Maybe it is not so easy to connect between the Salesforce Cloud and Azure? Should not be the case – given the recent work Salesforce has done with Salesforce App Cloud – the first multi-cloud PaaS. This is more about what it is not yet – Salesforce maybe using Azure or even SQL Server / Azure DB to move off its current Oracle database for its transactional applications. But was has not happen, can still happen, there is a lot of synergies between the two vendors waiting to be exploited (Machine Learning, IoT, PaaS, BigData etc. just come to mind immediately).

But for now a good move by both tech giants creating value for mutual customers, that’s what customer (and influencers) want to see – value creation for businesses by increased productivity. More of that, please.

-----

More time - checkout what I want Salesforce to address this Dreamforce:

<video>More about Microsoft:

News Analyis - NetSuite announced Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
Event Report - Microsoft TechEd - Top 3 Enterprise takeaways - read here
First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.

More about Salesforce:

News Analysis - Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough Salesforce IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder - First dips into IoT - read here
News Analysis - Salesforce Unveils the Next Wave of Salesforce Analytics Cloud—Delivering Actionable Insights Across the Customer Success Platform - Glass half full - and half empty! Read / watch here
Event Preview - What I would like Salesforce to address this Dreamforce 2015 - read / watch here
News Analysis - Salesforce Announces Salesforce App Cloud - A Unified Platform for Building Connected Apps, Fast - It’s all coming together, across the clouds - read here
News Analysis - alesforce Delivers Salesforce1 Lightning Components and App Builder […] - More productivity for Admins and Developers - read here
News Analysis - News Analysis - Salesforce Launches Salesforce Shield - More PaaS capabilities coming to Salesforce1 Platform - read here
News Analysis - Salesforce Transforms Big Data Into Customer Success with the Salesforce Analytics Cloud - Read here
News Analysis - Market Move - Salesforce (re) enters HCM - will it rypple the market this time? - Read here
Event Report - Salesforce Dreamforce - A Customer Succes Platform, Analytics and Lightning - but really Salesforce is re-platforming - read here
Constellation Research Summary of Salesforce Dreamforce 2014 - read here
Research Summary - An in depth look at Salesforce1 - Better packaging or new offerng? Read here.
Dreamforce 2013 Platform Takeaways - All about the mobile platform - or more? Read here.
Platform ecosystems are hard - Salesforce grows it - FinancialForce shrinks it - read here.
Our take on Salesforce.com Identity Connect - from three angles - Identity, CRM and PaaS - read here.
Takeaways from the Salesforce and Workday Strategic Partnership - read here.
Act II - The Cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
How many Pivots make a Pirouette? Salesforce's last Pivot - read here.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization salesforce Microsoft Chief Information Officer Chief Experience Officer

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Salesforce and Microsoft Announce Plans For Seamless Collaboration and Business Processes

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

Today at Salesforce Dreamforce in San Francisco, Microsoft and Salesforce joint announced future integrations between their two business collaboration platforms. While today integration is already available between Outlook and Salesforce, future integrations planned for preview in the second half of 2016 will include:

Skype for Business, providing presence awareness inside Salesforce and allow for seamless web conferencing, chat and VOIP calls
OneNote, enabling note taking to be linked directly to Salesforce records
Office Graph and Office Delve, so surface Salesforce content inside Microsoftâ€™s new search and discovery UIs
Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10

At first glance, these two companies have several competing products. However, this move showcases that both companies understand they have a large number of overlapping customers, and providing a seamless productivity and business process experience is a winning situation for everyone.

Salesforce Gains Productivity and Collaboration

As I wrote last year, the Salesforce platform has been missing a few basic collaboration features, such as:

"No integrated web-conferencing or video chat - Chatter does provide integrated instant messaging based on Salesforce.comâ€™s 2011 acquisition of DimDim, but the company still has not delivered native web-conferencing features. â€œ

Todayâ€™s announcement of Skype integration will help fill that gap. The ability to seamlessly start web-conferences, chats or VOIP calls from within Salesforce will be a very welcome addition. Ideally the content from those events will also be saved back to the appropriate records in Salesforce. For example, a Skype chat conversation about an account should be saved back to the Chatter stream for that record, or the recording of a web-conference about a service record should be accessible in the future to help resolve similar incidents.

"No long form content creation - While Chatter does allow for posts in the activity stream, it currently lacks any formal document creation tools. The lack of an integrated document editor means people have to switch to another tool (blog, wiki or word processor), changing contexts to create content. In 2012 Salesforce.com acquired online collaborative editor Stypi, but the closest thing we've seen to that is the very simple Notes application avilable in the mobile client of Salesforce1.â€

Todayâ€™s announcement of OneNote integration may help this, but they also offer some integration between Salesforce Files and the Microsoft Office Apps. The big benefit here is that information collected in OneNote will be able to link directly back to Salesforce records. Salesforce already has there own basic note taking application (which includes basic task management) so it will be interesting to see which application teams choose to use. Ideally it will be only one or the other, as you donâ€™t want information spread across multiple tools.

Microsoft Embraces Winning Platforms

These announcements are great examples of â€œthe new Microsoftâ€, where under Satya Nadella the company has embraced the idea of not going at it alone, but instead becoming comfortable with integrating with other successful vendors. (ex: Releasing Office applications for iPad and iPhones, instead of just their own Windows powered devices.) Even though Microsoft has competing products to Salesforce: Yammer vs Chatter, Dynamics vs Sales Cloud, OneNote vs Salesforce Tasks/Notes, OneDrive vs Salesforce Files, etc. they understand that many of their customers use products from both vendors. While there may be integration challenges for IT (well know more next year about directory integration, identity, security, compliance, etc), the people using Salesforce business solutions (Sales, Marketing, Service) to get their daily jobs done will surely benefit from a more seamless with their Microsoft collaboration tools.

Perhaps the most signifigant news is the Office Graph/Delve integration. When Microsoft first introduced Delve, the premise was that people would be able to easily discover relevant content across a variety of tools. Todayâ€™s announcement solidifies that claim, highlights that Office Graph extends beyond just Microsoft products, and shows how Delve can surface content from other key business platforms. Now people will be able to easily see all the files, emails, and Salesforce records about a customer or service record in one place.

The Big Winner Is Joint Customers

Microsoft and Salesforce both have very positive momentum right now with their product portfolios and marketing messages. With Office 365 Microsoft is successfully shedding the â€œSharePoint is just a corporate intranetâ€ image that existed during the 2000s, and Salesforce is moving far beyond just being a CRM tool used by Sales people. Bringing together these two successful platforms should provide a very compelling experience for joint customers, reducing the need for people to switch back and forth between the two. However, with the extensibility of these two cloud-centric platforms, Iâ€™m disappointed to hear the integrations will take almost a year to be delivered. Overall weâ€™re very optimistic about todayâ€™s news, and Constellation Research will continue to monitor these developments and report on the progress.

More Resources
Future of Work Social Business Trends

Future of Work salesforce Microsoft Chief People Officer

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Salesforce Makes Wave Analytics More Accessible, Affordable

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

Salesforce has revamped its Wave Analytics Cloud to embed insights directly into CRM, but the real winner for customers will be a bevy of new, pre-built sales, service and third-party analytic apps.

If you held off on implementing the Salesforce Wave Analytics Cloud, introduced at Dreamforce 2014, pat yourself on the back for waiting. The second release of Wave, introduced here at Dreamforce 2015, will give you better capabilities and better integration with sales and service apps at what promises to be a lower cost.

Last year Salesforce hailed Wave as it’s most successful new product launch ever. But there’s been recent turnover in Wave executive leadership, and honchos now admit to having “learned a few lessons” over the past year. Early on, for example, customers complained that Wave was too expensive, so the company dropped steep platform setup fees in favor of per-user, per-month pricing that’s currently set at $125 for “Explorer” users and $250 for “Builder” users.

But even these costs were prohibitive to many, so the big Wave news here at Dreamforce 2015 is the pending (mid October) release of the Sales Wave Analytics App. The company is still hasn’t detailed pricing, but the word on the street is that this pre-built app will be around $85 per user, per month and will give sales executives and teams the most sought-after sales insights. This app will be followed early next year by a Service Wave Analytics App at a similarly competitive price point.

Recognizing that many customers don’t want to have to build analytic apps, Salesforce is also touting here at Dreamforce more than a dozen third-party apps now in pilot release. Apttus, for example, has a Quote-to-Cash Intelligence App designed to give sales teams actionable insights into customers to improve the odds of winning contracts and meeting revenue targets. And FinancialForce is offering a ERP Wave App that gives users insight into financial and supply chain data so they can optimize business performance.

Salesforce has also improved Wave integration within applications and the extended platform. New Wave Actions, for example, will enable users to update accounts, assign tasks, create service cases and take other actions directly from any Wave Analytics Dashboard. Furthermore, new Wave Embedded Dashboards let you serve up insights and historical analysis directly in the context of any Salesforce record or object, so users won’t have to toggle between applications and a separate analytical environment.

Finally, to give all Salesforce customers exposure to Wave, Salesforce will soon release Lightning Reports & Dashboards for the Sales Cloud and Wave Visualization capabilities that will be exposed across the entire platform. Now in preview, Lighting Reports & Dashboards for Sales Cloud replace much more basic reporting and dashboarding capabilities previously available within that app. The new and improved functionality will released in October at no additional cost to Sales Cloud users. Behind the scenes are new Wave Visualization capabilities said to provide a diverse charting library and the ability to intuitively filter and modify visualizations on the fly.

MyPOV On Salesforce Wave Analytics, Take Two

The Salesforce press release highlighted the news about Wave Actions, Wave Embedded Dashboards and Wave Visualizations, but these embedded capabilities are really table stakes for a next-generation applications. It’s old news that users don’t want to have to toggle between transactional and analytical apps, particularly if they’re getting both capabilities from the same vendor. Only Salesforce can blend these two worlds directly, so it has to take this step to differentiate its services.

For my money (and, more importantly, the customer’s money), the real news with Wave Analytics Cloud, take two, is the imminent availability of ready-made sales, service and third-party analytic apps that should lower the cost of Wave entry. Given that these apps were announced this summer, I’m a little disappointed that we’re still a month away from general availability and pricing details.

Some customers will still want to use the general-purpose Wave Analytics analytics platform, which can be used to build any type of analytical application. But I expect the pre-built sales and service apps to bring the vast majority of Salesforce customers and users the insights they most need. The exact cost per-user, per app and the availability of bundling or multi-app discounts will make or break this second breaking of the Wave Analytics Cloud, so stay tuned for those announcements in October.

Data to Decisions salesforce Chief Information Officer

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Is Salesforce IoT Cloud Last Year's Analytics Cloud in New Packaging?

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

The major announcement at Dreamforce so far has been the Salesforce IoT cloud, I wrote a News Analysis blog post on Monday (check it out here).

By now we have learn more on the new offering - so time to collect first thoughts in a video:

For those who can't watch it here are the key takeaways:

Salesforce IoT Cloud uses a lot of opensource - Kafka, Spark, Storm and Cassandra are mentioned, in my view a good move - as pretty much all vendors now need to leverage open source to keep up with the speed of the community based development.
The setup looks / sounds very much of what Salesforce unveiled a year ago for Wave, now Salesforce Analytics Cloud. The concern is that an IoT architecture is very different from a BI / Analytics ingestion architecture.
The other concern is around the massive 'data gravity' of IoT - concepts that move the code to the data seem to be more successful in the long run than concepts that move data around, Salesforce seems to do the latter.

Keep in mind this is a First Take - we will learn more through the course of the week. Salesforce is creating substantial value connecting IoT events and data with its transactional applications. Stay tuned.

2015 Cars Online “The Selfie Experience” Study by Capgemni

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

As the connected customer experience continues to evolve, Cagemini today released the 16th annual global automotive study, The 2015 Cars Online “The Selfie Experience”. Phones have become “the” selfie device, now this study shows consumers want that same personalized experience as a segment of one. Something that can be difficult to pull off in real-life, customers expect seamless communication over all channels, including both physical and digital touch-points. In this study, over 7,500 consumers who were were “in-market”– planning to buy or lease a car in the next 12 months participated. The study spanned the globe, including Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US).

So what do consumers want in terms of a personalized customer experience? The study showed:

A wider variety of online sources are utilized when choosing a car, with dealer/manufacturer websites (49%), search engines (43%) and traditional dealerships (48%) now supplemented by web forums (19%), social media pages (12%) and smartphone apps (9%)

The use of more varied and non-traditional online information sources is particularly driven by the Asian markets (India/China), where 80% are significantly influenced by positive social media comments.

The physical dealership still plays a critical role for consumers, with 95% visiting one or more dealerships before purchase as people still want a tactile experience when buying a car.

Consumers want instantaneous personalized online services when buying a car and for post-sale experience too, where 95% expect a response to requests within 24 hours; for growth markets, 69% want one in less than four hours.

While consumers desire more personalized on and offline services, 45% have concerns over data privacy. There is a strong correlation between customer satisfaction and loyalty particularly for dealers:

Only 10% of customers, not satisfied at all, say they would likely or very likely buy their next car from the same dealer.
87% of highly satisfied customers would purchase the same brand again and
85% would buy from the same dealer.

In addition, customer do want a seamless experience across the lifecycle of buying a car. the study showed that there is much for OEMs to think about, including:

New entrants are a real threat – One-half of customers are interested in buying a car from a tech company like Apple or Google.
Customers expect more and more from OEMs and dealers – When they’re talking to a dealer about buying a car, they value technical expertise rather than a pure sales approach.
During ownership, customers want more and better contacts – They want more explanations about (for example) technology and how to use it, together with offers that are relevant to them.
Satisfaction is not enough – When it comes to repurchase, high levels of satisfaction are needed to create strong feelings of loyalty towards a manufacturer or dealer.

MY POV: The customer experience is something that customers want and have wanted it to be personalized, special, consistent and relevant. That’s always been the case. And we finally have technology that can deliver a more seamless, consistent and personalized experience.

The bigger issue? The internal structure of corporate America. It has developed into silo’d departments not used to collaborating or having each other’s back. But that has got to stop and stop now. Why? As I speak to customers, I see two types of leaders. In one segment of leaders, they are doing the same thing they did 20 years ago. They aren’t disrupting their silo’d organizational org chart, departmental separations or if they are doing something along these lines, it’s mostly lip service.

And then there are the leaders that truly get what has happened to the world. It had been stood on it’s head. It’s changed and changed a great deal. It takes a while sometimes for these things to show up on the bottom-line, it will.

And for those leaders and their companies that “get” what is happening to the customer experience via the digital disruption, they will make it through this major transition in corporate operations. The others? They will wake up one morning and all (or most) of their customers (and revenue) will be gone and they won’t have any idea what happened. But they can look back at this blog post and see that there was a weather bell that rang to give them a warning that one thing is for sure: Things are going to change and change they have.

Which camp is your company in? The ones that get the value of the customer experience or the ones that think it’s all fluff and silly kumbaya?

@drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, IOT of Customer Experience, Constellation Research

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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Informatica announces new cloud capabilities at DreamForce 2015

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

With Dreamforce in full swing in San Francisco, many of the key players in the Salesforce ecosystem have major announcements coming, too – one of them is Informatica, who updated us on new cloud capabilities.

So let’s dissect the press release in our customary style (it can be found here):

[…] Informatica, the world’s number one independent software provider focused on delivering transformative innovation for the future of all things data, today announced new Informatica Cloud capabilities and offerings that help power multiple key Salesforce initiatives, including: Internet of Things (IoT), analytics connectors and vertical solutions.

MyPOV – Good to follow the lead of the day, Salesforce’s Thunder where Informatica was mentioned as one of the partners.

Informatica is a leading Salesforce ISV partner providing pre-built native cloud integration and data management capabilities for Salesforce Clouds – including: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud and App Cloud – as well as vertical and role-based analytics connectors for the Salesforce Wave Analytics Platform.

MyPOV – Key is the ‘pre-built’ part – Informatica has gone a long way and invested a lot on the pre-built aspect, building native integrators on the platforms it supports. Informatica has early pushed to be a key player in the Salesforce ecosystem and is now seeing the advantages of that investment.

“Because Informatica supports every Salesforce offering, customers can leverage Informatica Cloud as a unified cloud integration solution across their Salesforce investments as they expand from one Salesforce org to multiple orgs, clouds and apps,” said Ronen Schwartz, vice president and general manager, Informatica Cloud. “Customers continue to benefit from the decade-long partnership between Informatica and Salesforce. Informatica Cloud makes it simpler than ever for business users, Salesforce administrators and LOB IT to integrate external data into their Salesforce Clouds and apps, while dramatically reducing time-to-market for new integrations and helping to efficiently scale out Salesforce deployments.”

MyPOV – Good quote from Schwartz – focusing on the business at hand. And administrator empowerment is always a good move in the Salesforce ecosystem.

New Informatica Cloud capabilities and offerings for Salesforce customers include:

● Internet of Things (IoT) – Informatica supports Salesforce’s IoT Cloud. Informatica empowers customers to stream and upload billions of events from applications, logs, devices and sensors to Salesforce — enabling companies to maximize the value of their data.

MyPOV – This is the ‘hot’ new announcement at Dreamforce – the Salesforce IoT cloud (my analysis here) and Informatica looks like one of the key partners to get the IoT data ready for the new Salesforce event handler.

● Analytics Apps Integration – Informatica provides a pre-built native connector that allows Salesforce administrators and IT to easily move external data into Salesforce Wave Analytics for business users’ access. Informatica now also enables integration of external data sources with the new Sales Wave Analytics app, a role-based analytics app that will deliver personalized templates, historical analysis and the ability to take immediate actions. This will help sales leaders manage forecasts, pipelines, team performance and more to accelerate business growth. Pre-built integrations to Wave Analytics help companies integrate a wealth of structured and unstructured data to extend analytics for every business need, making it easier than ever for anyone to explore and share data instantly, uncover new insights and take action from anywhere.

MyPOV – Wave and now the Salesforce Analytics Cloud are key growing products for Salesforce, so good to see Informatica going after the new and growing business here, addressing integration needs of customers.

● Enhanced Data Masking for Cloud Platform Users – Informatica Cloud Test Data Management (TDM) enables new security capabilities for SaaS production and sandbox data via award-winning Informatica data masking technology.

MyPOV – This s a vital product that is more and more popular in the Salesforce install base, helping customers to keep up with the increased testing needs and higher release cycles of the SaaS world. With data masking, more people can test new releases.

● Mission-Critical Connectivity for Vertical Apps – Informatica provides easy connectivity to on-premise and cloud vertical and horizontal applications. Customers can use Informatica’s pre-built integrations to accelerate time-to-market for their Salesforce implementations.

MyPOV – This is the bread and butter of the Salesforce business that Informatica does. Would have been good to see some specifics on what is new.

● Enhanced Connectors – Informatica delivers several new versions of pre-built connectors for leading cloud applications and big data sources, including: Box, Hadoop, MailChimp, Concur, Eloqua, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

MyPOV – And that is the next category, after on premise, the integration with other cloud / SaaS properties. Again – specifics would have been good here.

Overall MyPOV

A key show for Informatica, that has bet on the Salesforce ecosystem big time. And the bet has paid off and keeps paying off. To achieve that, Informatica needs to solve integration problems that are close to the new Salesforce offerings on IoT Cloud and Analytics Cloud (covered) but also Apps Cloud (not mentioned here).

On the concern side, betting on new Salesforce products is no guaranteed slam dunk as in the past, as Salesforce extends beyond the traditional home turf of CRM. But Informatica needs to invest in these areas in order to remain an early solution provider for the Salesforce ecosystem – so it is not an option for Informatica to stay out any of these major new Salesforce initiatives.

Overall a good announcement by Informatica, helping it to catch attention at Dreamforce and expand its footprint in the Salesforce ecosystem. Stay tuned.

More on Informatica:

Event Report - Informatica World 2015 - Product Progress and New Approaches - read here
News Analysis - Informatica's Sohaib Abbasi showcases Innovations for the Age of Engagement - read here
Future of Work - One spreadsheet at a time, Informatica Springbok - read here
Informatica pushes the cloud integration stakes - read here.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard.

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience informatica ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer

Read more about Informatica announces new cloud capabilities at DreamForce 2015

Webinar on The American Eagle Story- Competing On Experiences And Outcomes In A Mobile World

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

DELIVERING IN-STORE EXPERIENCES TO DIGITAL CUSTOMERS

Join me Thursday, October 8th, 2015 from 12 to 1 pm PT for a webinar on customer experience in a mobile world.

Only 37% of US brands rate their ability to achieve their eCommerce goals as very effective. As a result, most brands lack the ability to convert a large balance of prospects into revenue producing, loyal customers who could continuously provide revenue for the brand. Better understanding the customer journey and engagement preferences can help eCommerce professionals deliver an in-store experience to their digital customers.

No brand understands this better than American Eagle Outfitters (AEO). Join their Chief Digital Officer, Joe Megibow, and analyst R “Ray” Wang from Constellation Research as they explore how AEO is employing modern digital engagement strategies to drive sales across all devices.

To join, just register here.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

The post Event Invitation: Webinar on The American Eagle Story- Competing On Experiences And Outcomes In A Mobile World appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Sales Marketing Matrix Commerce Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work Data to Decisions Webinar SoftwareInsider AR B2C CX AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Robotics Metaverse developer Quantum Computing Social Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Experience Officer

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Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

This morning Salesforce released information on what is likely going to be the most important announcement of this year’s Dreamforce user conference, currently taking place in San Francisco.

So let’s dissect the press release in our customary style, it can be found here:

SAN FRANCISCO—DREAMFORCE 2015 —Sept. 15, 2015—Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the Customer Success Platform and world’s #1 CRM company, today announced Salesforce IoT Cloud. Powered by Thunder, a massively scalable, real-time event processing engine, IoT Cloud connects billions of events with Salesforce, unlocking insights from the connected world that empower anyone to take the right action, for the right customer, at the right time.

MyPOV – So we learn Salesforce Thunder is a real time event processing engine that connect things with Salesforce applications. It seems to be smart about doing the right thing at the right time.

“Salesforce is turning the Internet of Things into the Internet of Customers,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, Salesforce.“The IoT Cloud will allow businesses to create real-time 1:1, proactive actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process, delivering a new kind of customer success.”

MyPOV – Benioff explains more what is mentioned above, connect things data with customer data, of course for customer success, which seems to stay as the leitmotiv for Salesforce at this Dreamforce (which is good news – see my blog posts on too many pivots below).

Connected World, Disconnected Data
The combination of mobile, social, sensor, wearable and cloud technologies has triggered a deluge of data. More than 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated over the last two years. And, with the number of connected devices projected to reach 75 billion by 2020, the volume of data available is expected to grow exponentially.

MyPOV – Good point to raise the data volume and deluge, will be interesting how Salesforce plans to scale for it.

This world of connected devices and digital content presents an enormous opportunity for companies to take advantage of the new data. In a June 2015 report, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that IoT applications may have a potential economic impact of as much as $11.1 trillion per year by 2025. However, businesses have been unable to capitalize on the vast volume of data from the Internet of Things.

MyPOV – We know it’s a big next generation application example, and agree that enterprises must have an IoT strategy going forward.

Salesforce IoT Cloud, Powered by Thunder—Connecting to the Internet of Customers
IoT Cloud empowers businesses to connect data from the Internet of Things, as well as any digital content, with customer information, giving context to data and making it actionable—all in real-time. Thunder, built on a massively scalable, modern architecture, can "listen" to the connected world, ingesting billions of events a day, from any source. IoT Cloud’s capabilities include:

• Listen to the World at IoT Scale: IoT Cloud connects everything to Salesforce. In addition to the Internet of Things, connecting to phones, wearables, windmills and industrial turbines and other devices, IoT Cloud connects data from websites, social interactions and more to Salesforce. By connecting the billions of real-time events and digital content with Salesforce, the IoT Cloud brings customer context to transactional data.

MyPOV – We learn that the Salesforce IoT Cloud has listening capabilities to IoT data and connectivity capabilities not only to the things, but also website, social and more data. So it looks like Salesforce is leveraging some of its social listening and monitoring capabilities (all the way back to the Radian6 acquisition).

• Trigger Actions with Real-time Rules: With IoT Cloud, business users can use intuitive, point- and-click tools to define, modify and set rules and logic for events that can trigger actions across Salesforce. A global fleet management company, for example, can enforce passenger safety standards by setting filters for “hard brakes” or “hard accelerations” and defining rules that trigger in-car sensors to log service cases reporting possible instances of erratic driving. Or, a national retailer holding a holiday sale can set rules based on loyalty program status, inventory or sales performance, triggering retail beacons to send discount offers to in-store shoppers in real-time.

MyPOV – So next to listening Salesforce is deploying ‘triggers’ based on rules. Good news they seem to be able to be even user defined. It looks like Salesforce is leveraging more of the Analytics Cloud (aka Wave) capabilities here (see below for our take on its announcement). Good to see Salesforce making tangible examples.

• 1:1 Proactive Engagement through Salesforce: IoT Cloud seamlessly works across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to surface insights and trigger real-time 1:1, personalized actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process. For example, a thermostat provider can parse through billions of events gathered from weather forecasts, sensors and temperature settings to proactively alert customers on how to manage their HVAC usage within their predefined budget. Or, a vehicle assistance service partnering with an auto brand can send personalized offers on behalf of local dealers based on sensor data that tracks fluid levels and mileage.

MyPOV – Well that was a table stake – of course an IoT initiative by an application vendor… should work with the applications of that vendor. No surprise, but expected.

Comments on the News
• “Emerson is reinventing customer service,” said Todd Finders, CIO of Emerson Climate Technologies. “By integrating our connected comfort products and services with customer data in Salesforce in real-time, we will be able to address our customers’ needs in a proactive, personalized way.” […]

MyPOV – Always good see customer quotes endorsing the new capabilities in press release.

Salesforce Ecosystem Expands with IoT Partners
Salesforce is accelerating the adoption of IoT Cloud with initial launch partners ARM, Etherios, Informatica, PTC ThingWorx and Xively LogMeln that provide connectivity between devices and the Internet. The company will continue to expand its ecosystem of IoT partners to enable businesses to connect with their customers in a whole new way.

MyPOV – Good to see partners on the press release right away. It looks like partners will provide Salesforce with data (ARM, see the recent ‘chip to cloud announcement with IBM on my blog, too), Informatica, Xively LogMeIn and PTC ThingWorx for connectivity and Ehterios on an application side.

Salesforce App Cloud—the Unified Platform for Delivering Connected Apps Fast
Thunder is part of the Salesforce App Cloud, an integrated set of platform services that enable businesses to develop connected apps fast. With services for rapid app development, modern user experiences, integration, mobile app dev, identity management, compliance, governance and more, App Cloud is the most comprehensive and agile platform available to CIOs to deliver their app portfolio. App Cloud also includes an ecosystem of 2.3 million developers, who have built 5.5 million apps, and the AppExchange, the world’s largest enterprise app marketplace, which features more than 2,800 ISV apps and and 40 Lightning Components. All of this runs on the industry’s most trusted enterprise infrastructure that delivers approximately 3.7 billion transactions every business day.

MyPOV – Good to see that this is not ‘another’ cloud, but Salesforce Thunder is part of Salesforce App Cloud (the IoT Cloud is part of it, too then?), always good to see software vendors re-suing assets and creating synergies (see below my take on the Salesforce App Cloud).

Pricing and Availability
• IoT Cloud will be in pilot the first half of 2016 with generally availability later in the year. Pricing will be announced at the time of general availability.

MyPOV – Kudos to Salesforce for sharing ETA and at least give a date for pricing.

Overall MyPOV

It’s good to see Salesforce finding an IoT story, starting with event processing and ‘trigger’ like actions related to events and trends derived from the Things data. Was it 2 (or even 3) years ago when Marc Benioff pulled out his toothbrush doing a keynote, talking about his dentist knowing how well he used the brush? Well, we seem to be closer to realizing this now with Salesforce products and technology, always good for vendors to deliver. It also looks like Salesforce is re-using assets from Salesforce App and Analytics Cloud – which is always a good best practice for software vendors.

On the concern side the announcement is vague from a technical perspective. It is not clear how the event listener works, how the actions work and how they scale. Salesforce will have to shed more light on this – hopefully soon. Moreover any complete IoT strategy needs to offer Hadoop scale data management, storage and analytics usage, something this announcement does not mention. It looks like Salesforce sees its IoT strategy (for now) as connectivity issue, but this is not a long term IoT strategy (though a typical one for application vendors). Instead of bringing IoT data to the enterprise applications, we see it much more that enterprise application data has to come to the IoT data.

Overall a good first step by Salesforce, creating value for existing customers, but much more needs to follow to make Salesforce an IoT contender, and Salesforce App Cloud a veritable IoT platform contender. Maybe something Salesforce does not want to become. We will learn more at Dreamforce, stay tuned.

And if ready for some watching - checkout my video what I would like Salesforce to address this Dreamforce:

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists Announced

The judges' votes are in. Constellation Research is happy to announce the finalists for fifth annual SuperNova Awards for leaders in disruptive technology! The Constellation SuperNova Awards recognize the leaders and teams leading successful disruptive technology implementation projects.

We at Constellation know advancing the adoption of disruptive technology is not easy. Disruptive technology adoption often faces resistance from supporters of the status quo, myopia, and financial constraint. We believe actors fighting these forces to champion disruptive technology in their organizations help, not only their organizations, but society as a whole to realize the potential of new and emerging technologies.

On September 21, 2015 the polls open to the public. Be sure to return to the Constellation website to vote for SuperNova Award winners!

The SuperNova Award finalists will join the Constellation team at The SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner on November 5, 2015 where we will announce the winners of the 2015 SuperNova Awards. The Gala Dinner will take place on the first night of Constellation’s Connected Enterprise innovation summit.

Read the SuperNova Award Finalists' case studies.

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists

Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite

Russell Foltz-Smith, TrueCar
Daniel Hart, MEDHOST
Craig Pavia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade & Development Canada
Martin Brodbeck, SterlingBankcheck

Data to Decisions

Rasim Manavoglu, MUDO
Joshua Marshall, State of Indiana
Alda Mizaku, Mercy Health
Jamie Oswald, Mercy Health
Mike Peterson, Neustar, Inc.
Scott Salter, Cox Automotive
Sam Savage, Barclays

Digital Marketing Transformation

Naveen Gunti, Tumi Holdings, Inc.
Tushar Patel, Innotas
Michael Seminara, Janome America
Dan Sichel, Mind Share World
Tom Vu, Atmel Corporation
John Sahagian, Baxter Credit Union

Future of Work

Asha Aravindakshan, Ashoka
Geoff Corb, Johns Hopkins University
Cris Debord/Kenny Bailey/Brandon Garner, Dollar General
Steve Nava, Luminex
Hadi Partovi, Code.org
Helen Scott, Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health
Christian Trujillo, Western Union
Phillip Young, Dowco Consultants Ltd.
Donna Morris, Adobe

Matrix Commerce

Steve Carlson, FloraCraft
Rodney Henson, MetLife
Jordan Kivelstadt, Free Flow Wines
Erica Stevens, Dylan’s Candy Bar
David Tomlinson, ConAgra Foods
Ajit Sivadasan, Lenovo

Next Generation Customer Experience

John Bollen, MGM Resorts International
Dennis Bromley, Mountain America Credit Union
Mark Fordham, Central Desktop
Belinda Rushing, nTelos Wireless
Aparajita Gupta, Firstsource Solutions Ltd.
Brian Murray, CoTap
Howard Tarnoff, Ceridian
Dan Wallis, Kaiser Permanente
Bill Zhang, SAP and the National Basketball Association (NBA)

Technology Optimization and Innovation

Erica Stevens, Dylan’s Candy Bar
Dr. David Bray, Federal Communications Comission
Jeffrey Cohen, The MENTOR Network
Carter Maslan, Camio
Bob Moore, InterMetro Industries
Eric Quinn, C&S Companies
Julien Ramond, Club Auto Roadside Services Ltd., a CAA company
Heather Maniscalco, Blackboard, Inc.
RJ Smith, Venture Technologies
Keth Zecchini, Parsons Brinckerhoff
Paul Wright, Accuride

Data to Decisions Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth AR Executive Events Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer

Read more about 2015 SuperNova Award Finalists Announced

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Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015

Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015

News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers

News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers

Overall MyPOV

Salesforce and Microsoft Announce Plans For Seamless Collaboration and Business Processes

Salesforce and Microsoft Announce Plans For Seamless Collaboration and Business Processes

Salesforce Makes Wave Analytics More Accessible, Affordable

Salesforce Makes Wave Analytics More Accessible, Affordable

Is Salesforce IoT Cloud Last Year's Analytics Cloud in New Packaging?

Is Salesforce IoT Cloud Last Year's Analytics Cloud in New Packaging?

2015 Cars Online “The Selfie Experience” Study by Capgemni

2015 Cars Online “The Selfie Experience” Study by Capgemni

Informatica announces new cloud capabilities at DreamForce 2015

Informatica announces new cloud capabilities at DreamForce 2015

Overall MyPOV

Webinar on The American Eagle Story- Competing On Experiences And Outcomes In A Mobile World

Webinar on The American Eagle Story- Competing On Experiences And Outcomes In A Mobile World

DELIVERING IN-STORE EXPERIENCES TO DIGITAL CUSTOMERS

Disclosure

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder

Overall MyPOV

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists Announced

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists Announced

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists

Research

Analyst Services

Videos

Communities

Events

Insights Live

Results

Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015

News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers

Overall MyPOV

Salesforce and Microsoft Announce Plans For Seamless Collaboration and Business Processes

Salesforce Makes Wave Analytics More Accessible, Affordable

Is Salesforce IoT Cloud Last Year's Analytics Cloud in New Packaging?

2015 Cars Online “The Selfie Experience” Study by Capgemni

Informatica announces new cloud capabilities at DreamForce 2015

Overall MyPOV

Webinar on The American Eagle Story- Competing On Experiences And Outcomes In A Mobile World

DELIVERING IN-STORE EXPERIENCES TO DIGITAL CUSTOMERS

Disclosure

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder

Overall MyPOV

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists Announced

2015 SuperNova Award Finalists