Dreamforce 2011: Marc Benioff and Eric Schmidt Keynote Discussion

This is an excellent session captured on video of a discussion between Marc Benioff and Eric Schmidt.

http://tiny.cc/mo9wu

Eric outlines beyond Social Enterprise, which involves artificial agents having dialogue with customers through their mobile phone. Some of this thinking was encapsulated in a paper published by the Economics Intelligence Unit called the Future of Marketing: Moving from Monologue to Dialogue that was sponsored by Google. Though it was published in 2006 it has become clear this is an integral part of the Google strategy. Eric now sees that the dialogue platform sits above the Social Enterprise Platform. No wonder Marc and Eric are on the same stage.

Dreamforce 2011: Marc Benioff's keynotes are now on video

The Entire Dreamforce Keynote 2011 by Marc Benioff is now available on-line:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By7abvkNLS4

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ldVcOOxr5A

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Skf4kxcGc

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofaDa07v7l0

Part 3 includes Lord Rothermere, Chairman of DMGT. 

Keynote Marc Benioff conversation with Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google about the digital roadmap

The most exciting part of this keynote dialogue was Marc asking Eric what is going to be beyond the Social Enterprise.

Eric answered by saying that mobile will become our personal advisor so that, with permission, it will use point of presence to suggest choices that are most likely to be of interest at that moment in time. This he believes will be the next paradigm shift based on ‘sensing’ and ‘responding’ using contextual dialogue. Therefore, he passionately believes the next generation of apps will be based around predictive states and artificial agents for meaningful dialogue.

This positioning ought not to be a surprise as Larry Page and Sergey Brin both believe the future will be driven more and more by Artificial Intelligence. It is also in keeping with the web road map:

• Web 3.0 Cloud and Mobile with Social Enterprise leading the way 
• Web 4.0 Artificial Intelligence Complementing Humans 
• Web 5.0 Artificial Intelligence Surpassing Humans 

Eric positioned the future state in line with Web 4.0 and Web 5.0 and articulated that a higher level of platform (presence + predictive + artificial agents) will sit above the Social Enterprise platform. It is no wonder Marc and Eric are on the same stage as they are creating a win-win future state.

Eric believes ‘mobile first’ is the priority for developing apps. No wonder Marc has recently launched the Mobile AppExchange as an accelerator for businesses to go global.

Marc and Eric were both in agreement it is now all about social + mobile + open + local + real-time.

It seems to me solution-sets should be local, national and global – this three tiered framework is now feasible for forward thinking corporates.

One final note, both Marc and Eric are seriously concerned at the lack of new ideas for job creation. New models are needed and are needed fast. 

Dreamforce 2011 some of the force.com features

Here are some of the Force.com features:

• declarative logic (5GL)
• workflow and logic
• analytics
• Chatter built-in
• mobile ready
• open APIs
• APEX programmatic logic
• Visual Force for front-ends 
• Security and sharing rules
• Chatter Connect for data feeds
• Mobile: touch.salesforce.com and HTML5
• Open streaming API
• Siteforce

There has been a major update to make the workflow more drag-and-drop, clicks not code  

Dreamforce 2011 Some of the database.com features

Here are some of the highlights for database.com:

• Social Enterprise data model
• Shared security model
• REST API lets you integrate with Force.com applications using simple HTTP methods
• Tool-kit for Android and iOS (Apple)
• Platform agnostic API
• Data Residency Option

Also its free to get started

• 100,000 records
• 50,000 transactions per month 
• 3 enterprise users 

Dreamforce 2011 Changing the corporate and investment economics of apps

At the moment there are over 1,250 apps on the Appexchange which are designed not to 'reinvent the wheel'. This is already the world's leading cloud exchange for corporate apps, which is already a $500m market place.

The Appexchange is still quite small compared to

• Facebook which has 550,000 apps 
• Apple + Google which have 750,000 apps 

New apps are being developed all the time. 

The most impressive new entry is a company called Kenandy which raised funding from Salesforce and  Kleiner Perkins. The investment decision by Ray Lane from Kleiner Perkins took only 5 days because of the credential of the founder Sandy Kurtzig. Kenandy's market sector is social manufacturing. 

What is amazing is that the first social manufacturing app took 14 days to build.

Now Salesforce has launched the Mobile Appexchange. 

The investment cycles for new apps has changed profoundly. 

Using the Social Enterprise PaaS provides scalability without any CapEx for servers.

The Appexchange will grow rapidly as corporates with their partners are likely to build apps that can be resold on the Appexchange. The notion that corporates can move from the cost of apps to generating a profit from apps is now a reality.

The advantage of corporates using partners is that they can provide the support and follow-on development. 

There is now an emerging new economic model for corporates, investors and Salesforce partners. 

Dreamforce 2011 Salesforce creates leading Social Enterprise PaaS

The Platform-as-a-Service provides the ability for an enterprise to create hundreds or thousands of apps that are underpinned by the same architecture, which has been purposed built for the Social Enterprise.

The new Social Enterprise  PaaS architecture basically consists of

Level 1 Social, Mobile, Real-time and Open

Level 2 Force.com and Heroku

Level 3 Database.com

Level 4 Data.com

Dreamforce 2011 Salesforce-to-Salesforce for sharing data across Orgs

Salesforce-to-Salesforce makes it fast and easy to share data between different Orgs. You can share lead, opportunity, account, contact, task, product, opportunity product, case, or custom object records with any other Org and get real-time updates on the shared data.

This enables collaboration to be a lot more easy.

With Salesforce-to-Salesforce, your different business units or partners can easily integrate your data with the data they manage in Salesforce. They can also integrate their business processes with updates received from you using workflow, assignment rules, and reports.

Dreamforce 2011 Gamification

Gamification was mentioned quite a lot but lacked substance. Looked at the Bunchball offering for the sales funnel but I would say it is early days.

It has become clear that there is a big difference between Consumer Gamification and Enterprise Gamification. Consumer Gamification is quite advanced but experts are struggling with Corporate Gamification ... this is a great area to evolve.

Dreamforce 2011 Artificial Agents

Virtuoz has launched a Salesforce version of its artificial agent. For issues the artificial agent cannot solve then it launches a case.

There is no doubt that Artificial Agents will have an increasing role to play in the Social Enterprise.

Dreamforce 2011 Job Science for Recruitment

Job Science has launched a product for recruitment using social enterprise. This looks like a great idea for recruitment practices to increase their productivity and value to clients. It uses the sales funnel concept except that it has been re-purposed for recruitment.

Dreamforce 2011 Tenrox

Tenrox is now integrated with Salesforce.

Dreamforce 2011 New Licence Agreement

It was announced today that there is a new Social Enterprise Licence that has unlimited use of products and users.

The first contract has been signed by Coco Cola.

No cost details have been provided.

Dreamforce 2011 Social Command Centres

A number of Salesforce clients are using Radian6 to run Command Centres that are monitoring social networks. This capability is to create Lead Indicators of emergent patterns that is being used to drive personalised service and innovation of new products.

The new version of Radian6 will be more integrated with Salesforce and will have richer abilities to listen, analyse and engage.

Radian6 has some neat capabilities including slice and dice channels. Mind you it could benefit from more visualisation capabilities ...

Dreamforce 2011 Intranets are dead, long live the social enterprise

The Service Cloud will have the richest version of Chatter which is integrated across all channels and touch points. This level of integration means that if one cannot find the knowledge then the use of Chatter will often help solve the problem.

The richness of the Service Cloud is the highest form of the Social Enterprise, which is a blended solution-set of employees, customers, suppliers and partners working together but within whatever restrictions are deemed necessary. So an employee may belong to several groups with each group involving different customers.

The richness of this capability means the intranet as we know it is dead!!

Dreamforce 2011 Salesforce launch touch.salesforce.com

The touch.salesforce.com is yet another big announcement.

Basically this capability drives HTML5. In other words, you can design experiences across all mobile, tablet and PC devices.

This enables HTML5 to be used to develop apps that run natively but within the Cloud.

So touch.salesforce.com (needs a better name) is a platform for front-ends.

So you can design a front-end that orchestrates data from different force.com orgs, database.com, data.com and Heroku.  If this is confusing then read my earlier blogs.

All you need now are good designers that can simulate the different experiences, which are underpinned by the same data and functionality.

Dreamforce 2011 Salesforce launches data.com

Autumn Release

Data.com is a new capability which is an aggregation of Jigsaw data (crowd-sourcing with gamification to drive data quality for customer data) and Dun & Bradstreet data.

Data.com uses external data to provide updates to your customer data for marketing and sales.

Link data.com with the Social CRM announcement of automatically getting customer social data and the combination is awesome.

All we need now is better visualisation of this data ..... big hint for Fractal Maps ....

Link the above to the next generation of loyalty scheme with gamification!!

Dreamforce 2011 Chatter Everywhere

Autumn Release

• Chatter contains the Now presence. This means you know if some is available. You can then use Chatter Chat which is instant messaging. 
• Chatter Connect makes it easier to extend Chatter into other systems so for example there is an API for SharePoint.
• Chatter Groups means you can collaborate around documents and cases. A big feature is that you can have a Chatter Group include customers, in the comfort that they cannot go outside the group's walled garden. One idea is to use customers in a group for peer-to-peer problem solving and ideas generation.
• Chatter will include Face Time for video conferencing and collaboration. Big implications for customer support, problem solving and co-innovation with the customer for new product design.
• Chatter Inline that has a taxonomy filter for rapid drill down.
• Chatter Approvals which supports work flows using smarter collaboration and decisioning.
• Can also have in-line videos with chatter interactions. 
• Extend Chatter to mobile apps for employees and customers alike.
• Collaborate around documents and files. 
• Chatter for collaborative revenue forecasting 
• The above supports crowd-sourcing.
• The above supports sales teams.

Dreamforce 2011 Database.com is social and solves data sensitivities

Winter Release

database.com truly becomes the first cloud social database offering at scale.  By social it means it is open and includes all media types and mobile. The big media companies are already using database.com for social video services.

Along with this release is DRO Data Residency Option which enables data to be picked up through any source including legacy systems such as SharePoint and Lotus Notes. It includes handling data that needs to remain stored within the corporate firewalls.

This is a big change and should drive cloud integration with the world of legacy whilst driving innovation for high end social enterprise solutions.

Dreamforce 2011 CRM to enrich the customer data with their social data

New Winter Release

The standard CRM customer data will be updated in real time with their social data from targeted social networks including:

• Facebook
• Twitter 
• LinkedIn 

These updates are based on real time streaming and includes pictures. 

The implications are huge .....