Drinking the Dreamforce Kool-Aid amid the Enterprise Spring
Posted by Jim Flack on September 13, 2011
I recently attended the mother of all cloud tradeshows: Dreamforce 2011, sponsored by SalesForce.com. Held over the Labor Day Weekend, Dreamforce turned out to be the biggest trade show of its kind in North American history with 45,000 registered attendees converging in San Francisco to learn about the emerging “social enterprise” and how the business development industry is undergoing one of the greatest paradigm shifts of all time.
Despite one typical Frisco foggy morning, the weather could not have been better. Sunny, warm and a nice breeze made walking in and out of the Moscone campus buildings a delight. The partner and vendor exhibits had tons of swag to grab, and the after-hour parties were a must for marketers like me. Oh, and yes, and I also attended a lot of educational sessions, hands-on training and 1:1 success clinics (in case my boss is reading this!)
And then there was the Global Gala with Metallica – their first-ever corporate event, rocking out thousands of geeks! You can see photos of DreamForce on our FaceBook page.
I have to also admit I was impressed by SalesForce.com CEO Marc Benioff. In his keynote speech, he emphasized how the enterprise is becoming humanized, and we are entering into an “Enterprise Spring,” paralleling the ongoing “Muslim Spring” which has seen the fall of leaders in Egypt, Libya and maybe Syria. And he stated this is all fueled by the power of social media.
He challenged the crowd by asking: “Which CEO will be the first to fall because he/she is not listening to their customers?” According to Benioff, companies and corporations who do not build personal relationships with customers via Twitter, FaceBook, and other social media networks will never realize their full revenue potential.
How does this social business optimization impact the cloud? Like Hubspan, SalesForce is delivered as Software-as-a-Service and manages potential customers through a cloud-based platform that holds all your data. Salesforce is evolving its Web-based CRM application beyond containing key data and information about your leads, prospects, customers and partners, to enable you to view a wide social profile, analyze buying behavior and discover mutual interests to connect with those leads and contacts.
OK, I admit that I may have drank too much of the DreamForce Kool-Aid, but because I am heavily involved with the social media strategy for Hubspan, I was excited to see those kind of apps integrated even more in today’s enterprises. Let’s see how long Benioff’s vision of the “social enterprise” becomes a reality for B2C and B2B companies.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Dreamforce, Mark Benioff, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Social Enterprise
No Comments »
No comments yet.