Dreamforce 2015: Key Announcements Days 1-2

Greetings from Dreamforce! Constellation analysts have analyzed all the announcements made by Salesforce, and have compiled a rundown of the top announcements for their coverage areas. 

Continue checking the Constellation blog for ongoing coverage of the announcements made at Dreamforce 2015. 

Alan Lepofsky - Integration with Microsoft Products Reduces Friction, Boosts Productivity 

Yesterday at Dreamforce, Salesforce and Microsoft announced that in 2016 they will be delivering integration between the Salesforce Sales Cloud and various Microsoft productivity tools such as Skype, OneNote and Delve. This will provide joint customers a more seamless experience, reducing the need to jump back and forth between multiple tools.  

Salesforce also introduced SalesforceIQ, which ties Salesforce CRM records to a person’s email and calendar. With these items linked, Salesforce can provide more context around key events, such as showing the account records of the recipients of an email, or the outstanding tasks linked to the attendees of a meeting.  

Finally, Salesforce introduced a brand new web interface for Sales Cloud, which they call Lightning.  This new interface updates the current decade old UI, providing a modern and highly customizable experience. 

Read more about the Salesforce/Microsoft integrations

Connect with Alan Lepofsky: @alanlepo

Natalie Petouhoff - Hopeful Salesforce's IoT Cloud Delivers Customer Experience

Customer Experience IoT is developing very quickly, powered by companies like Salesforce who recently announced the IoT Cloud. 

The future of customer experience is Customer Experience IoT. The promise of this technology is as follows: as products become services, companies will receive a bevy of information about their customers. Soon IoT will enable companies to track their customers' sentiments about products, and use the data to deliver personalized experiences en masse.  

Keep in mind, in order to effectively implement these technologies and make use of the data being received, most businesses will need to undergo organizational change. Leadership will need to be comprised of leaders who understand digital business, and can pass that vision along to every employee. If your company is set in its ways, do not expect to take advantage of Customer Experience IoT. 

The bottom-line: customer experience is the new business currency and the path to business growth is via the IOT Customer Experience Cloud. (Note: privacy and protection of customer data will be the downfall of IOT customer experience clouds and software companies that are really dedicated to make it secure will have the competitive advantage to help their clients take advantage of the most important business transformation since the industrial age.)

Connect with Natalie Petouhoff: @drnatalie

Doug Henschen - Salesforce Makes Wave Analytics Wave Accessible, Affordable

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. 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. Salesforce has also improved Wave integration within applications and the extended platform.

The real news with Wave Analytics Cloud, is the imminent availability of ready-made sales, service and third-party analytic apps that should lower the cost of Wave entry. 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. 

News Analysis: Inside Salesforce Wave Analytics

Read more about Wave Analytics Cloud

Connect with Doug Henschen: @dhenschen

Holger Mueller - Build Apps Faster with App Cloud 

The key announcements at Dreamforce so far have touched key technologies for next generation Applications. Salesforce's new App Cloud will offer better integration between force.com applications and Heroku-based applications. As Heroku runs on AWS, this is the first cross-cloud PaaS announcement in the industry, something we will see more of. Cross-cloud PaaS makes it easier for enterprises to build next generation capabilities by enabling organizations to leverage the best of Salesforce platforms in one cohesive application.

The announcement of Salesforce Thunder as part of the IoT Cloud is significant because Thunder helps to connect IoT data volumes with Salesforce transactional applications. This enables enterprises to react to IoT signals directly in their Salesforce applications.

Read more analysis about Salesforce App Cloud, Analytics Cloud, IoT Cloud

Connect with Holger Mueller: @holgermu 

Steve Wilson - Salesforce's IoT Cloud Presents Opportunities to "Tame" Information Glut

Salesforce with their announcement of a new "IoT Cloud" powered by their Thunder analytics engine, are part of a new wave of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers to understand the power they bring to the Internet of Things. The need and the opportunity is not just about interconnection - it's about taming the information, and more. 

We typically think of IoT as the computerization and connection of everday objects. The result of this interconnection is usually either automation or control (using in-car console to activate air conditioning before arrival at the home), but the really disruptive benefits of IoT will be much less manual, with machines and algorithms cooperating automatically.  

Bandwidth and availability will be key. Frankly I'm bored with the predictions of 100s of billions of devices being online. Far more impressive is the data; a modern car for instance may generate a gigabyte of data every second.  How much of that will have to get out into the Internet to do anyone any good? How much will be pre-processed onboard, and how much will need to be crunched in the cloud?  The mix is going to be critical, for the IoT must be about all the decisions and actions passed along from system to system.  

That's the rationale for Salesforce's "IoT Cloud". As with any data processing, IoT data is nothing without analytics, rules, and feedback loops. Salesforce is bringing its Big Data capabilities to the Internet of Things, so that the flood of data from appliances, tools, machinery, buildings, vehicles and instrumented goods can be rendered sensibly and acted upon.  We can expect the Salesforce PaaS ecosystem, packaged anew as "IoT Cloud" to breed a host of new data supply chains, intelligent agents and intermediaries. 

"IoT Cloud" may look like marketing, but the information management aspects of the Internet of Things are only now taking shape commercially.  The stupendous volume and velocity of data in the IoT, and the complexity of responses to it all, makes the case for analytics-as-a-service more compelling than ever.  

Connect with Steve Wilson: @steve_lockstep 

 

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Salesforce Empowers UCSF to Study Benefits of Personal Approach to Breast Cancer Screening

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…...

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Precision Medicine Has Arrived: A research team at UC San Francisco has won a five-year award of $14.1 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to investigate whether a personalized approach to breast cancer screening is as safe and effective as annual mammograms. The project, called the WISDOM study, will be led by breast cancer researcher Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, professor of surgery and director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Salesforce Foundation has similarly partnered with the Athena Breast Health Network to provide generous support of our important joint efforts.  Salesforce.com, an enterprise cloud computing company, is helping to revolutionize how organizations collaborate, communicate and share important information. 

“The controversy surrounding breast cancer screening has left women and their providers frustrated and confused,” said Esserman. “The time has come to put the controversy to rest.”

More on the Actual Breast Cancer Study: The five-year study – a UC Health systemwide effort with participation from all five UC medical centers – will involve approximately 100,000 women 40 to 80 years old. It will test a more targeted approach to breast cancer screening: those at higher risk are screened more often and those at lower risk are screened less often. Annual screening will be weighed against a personalized schedule of screening based on each woman’s individual risk.

“This pragmatic trial will allow us to learn who is at risk for what type of breast cancer, and to continue to refine our approach to screening, potentially leading to less screening for those at very low risk and more for those at greater risk,” Esserman said. “It will enable us to focus on prevention as well. If our study is successful, fewer women will suffer from the anxiety of false-positive mammograms and unnecessary biopsies, and more women will gain a realistic understanding of their personal risk of breast cancer, which may reduce general worry about breast cancer.”

How Will The Study Work? Women will be invited to be randomized (assigned by chance) to either the personalized or the annual screening arm. The two strategies will be compared to determine whether personalized screening is as safe as annual screening and whether it will reduce false-positive results and over-diagnosis.

Investigators also will determine whether women will readily accept personalized screening and whether knowledge of their own risks – and the reasons for their personalized screening regimen – will reduce, or at least not increase, anxiety about breast cancer. Additionally, the researchers will determine whether the personalized approach will lead to more of the highest-risk women deciding to use strategies that may prevent breast cancer.

Participants in the personalized screening arm will receive a risk assessment that will evaluate family and medical history, breast density, and tests for genes linked to the development of breast cancer.

Those with the highest personal risk of developing breast cancer or cancers that grow more quickly will receive recommendations to begin screening at an earlier age, receive mammograms more often, and continue screening until they are older. Those with the lowest personal risk will begin screening later, screen less frequently, and stop screening earlier. No woman will be screened less often than is recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines.

What Will The Outcomes Be? “We will learn from each woman who participates, and each woman will be equipped equally with more informed options to better personalize her medical care,” said Alan Ashworth, PhD, FRS, president of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior vice president for cancer services of UCSF Health. “This is a significant rethinking of breast cancer risk assessment and is a great example of how the UCSF cancer center is working to fully integrate cancer care with research for patient benefit.”

Participants in the breast cancer study will be drawn from the Athena Breast Health Network, a collaboration of the five University of California (UC) medical centers to drive innovation in breast cancer prevention, screening and treatment.

All eligible women from participating health plans who receive breast cancer screening at a UC medical center will be able to participate. The first health plan to participate is UC Care, a self-insured PPO plan for UC employees and retirees that offers care provided by UC’s medical centers. The first insurer to participate is Blue Shield of California, which has created a policy that will allow reimbursement for study-related services for members who are enrolled in the WISDOM trial while data are still being gathered about the safety and efficacy of personalized breast cancer screening. Discussions are underway with additional health plans and insurers.

“Blue Shield of California is pleased to support this important work to improve breast cancer screening and prevention,” said Marcus Thygeson, MD, MPH, chief health officer at Blue Shield of California. “The current ‘one size fits all’ screening approach doesn’t do enough to reduce breast cancer deaths while also causing women to undergo unnecessary testing and treatment that harms their quality of life. This study promises to help find a better approach to breast cancer prevent and treatment, which will benefit our entire community.”

UC’s systemwide Center for Health Quality and Innovation will partner with Athena on the project to help provide value-based care.

“This project is a paradigm shift for preventive screening, harnessing UC’s system-wide strengths to advance care for Californians,” said John Stobo, MD, executive vice president of UC Health. “We’re thrilled to be able to offer this screening trial to UC employees and the broader public.”

The breast cancer study is one of five projects selected for PCORI funding totaling $64.1 million. The award was approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract to UCSF.

“This project was selected for PCORI funding not only for its scientific merit and commitment to engaging patients and other health care stakeholders in a major study conducted in real-world settings, but also for its potential to answer an important question about breast cancer screening and fill a crucial evidence gap,” said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. “We look forward to following the study’s progress and working with UCSF to share its results.”

PCORI is an independent non-profit research institution. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions. For more information about PCORI’s funding awards, visit the Research and Results page on www.pcori.org

UCSF is the nation’s leading university exclusively focused on health. Now celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding as a medical college, UCSF is dedicated to transforming health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with world-renowned programs in the biological sciences, a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and top-tier hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals.

Having lost my mom to cancer, this particular project is very near and dear to my heart.

@drnatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough Salesforce IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder

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…...

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Connected World, Disconnected Data: The Answer? IOT Cloud

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. Without making sense of all this data, we just have a ton of nothingness and a lot of talk about possibility. But it’s time for possibility to turn into probability. And that’s what is in store for companies that are looking at the IOT Cloud.

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

IoT Cloud connects billions of events from devices, sensors, applications and more from the Internet of Things to Salesforce—enabling companies to unlock insights from the connected world. IoT Cloud is powered by Salesforce Thunder, a massively scalable, real-time event processing engine that enables Salesforce customers to personalize the way they sell, service, market… IoT leaders ARM, Etherios, Informatica, PTC ThingWorx and Xively LogMeln join Salesforce’s ecosystem to accelerate IoT Cloud customer success. Companies including Emerson and Pitney Bowes look to connect with their customers in powerful new ways with IoT Cloud.

Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, Salesforce said, “Salesforce is turning the Internet of Things into the Internet of Customers. 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.”

The IOT Cloud is the beginning of making sense of all the data turn information into actionable insights that really move the needle on a businesses growth, revenue, and bottomline. It’s time technology delivered on the promise of yesterday year and that time is now. To see how it can work, check out this video.

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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…...

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Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

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…...

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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.

2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

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

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:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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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 Microsoft’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.com’s 2011 acquisition of DimDim, but the company still has not delivered native web-conferencing features. “ 

Today’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.” 

Today’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 don’t want information spread across multiple tools.

Microsoft Embraces Winning Platforms

These announcements are great examples of â€œthe new Microsoft”, 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. Today’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 “SharePoint is just a corporate intranet” 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, I’m disappointed to hear the integrations will take almost a year to be delivered. Overall we’re very optimistic about today’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

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,…...

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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

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: - &nbsp;Identity management, frameworks &amp; governance- &nbsp;Digital identity technologies- &nbsp;Privacy by Design -&nbsp; Big Data; “Big Privacy”- &nbsp;Identity &amp; privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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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. 
 

More on 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.

2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

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

2015 Cars Online “The Selfie Experience” Study by Capgemni

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:&nbsp;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)&nbsp;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…...

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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

Informatica announces new cloud capabilities at DreamForce 2015

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&nbsp;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.&nbsp; Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization &amp; Innovation&nbsp; 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…...

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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.

2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

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