Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff onstage at the Dreamforce ’12 conference.[/caption] SAN FRANCISCO—Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the stage to kick off the Dreamforce ’12 conference at the Moscone Center here, pushing a vision of the public cloud as the best foundation for modern business processes. His keynote address started in a way familiar to anyone who’s seen a Benioff speech over the past few years, with a brief description of how the computing world has evolved from mainframes to PCs and from there to a more mobile-centric paradigm centered on the cloud. As he waded off the stage into the crowd, he launched into how a “social revolution” is changing both the computing world and society at large. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to our industry,” he said. “How many of you use social media or social networking or some aspect of social computing today in your business?” Nearly every hand in the vast auditorium went up. “It’s the fastest growing segment of our industry,” he said. “Nothing touches social in our industry.” CEOs believe that conversations on social networks are one of the top ways for companies to engage with customers, he added, citing an IBM CEO study from 2012. Social interactions with coworkers, customers, and suppliers are altering the DNA of business itself. In light of that, Salesforce is “doubling down,” in Benioff’s words, on this social aspect of business. “This solidifies our vision, what we’re doing, why we’re here,” he said. The hundreds of hands raised in response to Benioff’s earlier question indicates that many businesses are, indeed, undergoing a “social” revolution, with their operations touched in some way by Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and similar services. But for Benioff, the interaction extends beyond people to machines and products. In a lengthy part of the keynote, he described how General Electric asked him to give a presentation on how the industry giant could evolve. He proposed something called “GE Share,” in which employees interacted not only with coworkers and customers, but also with the products under development. A GE engineer could “collaborate” with an engine via status updates, before bringing in other engineers, end users, and others to discuss and network over the data. But that's a vision of the future still very much in development. For the here-and-now, Salesforce revealed some of its latest products:
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Talks Social Future
[caption id="attachment_4608" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff onstage at the Dreamforce ’12 conference.[/caption] SAN FRANCISCO—Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the stage to kick off the Dreamforce ’12 conference at the Moscone Center here, pushing a vision of the public cloud as the best foundation for modern business processes. His keynote address started in a way familiar to anyone who’s seen a Benioff speech over the past few years, with a brief description of how the computing world has evolved from mainframes to PCs and from there to a more mobile-centric paradigm centered on the cloud. As he waded off the stage into the crowd, he launched into how a “social revolution” is changing both the computing world and society at large. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to our industry,” he said. “How many of you use social media or social networking or some aspect of social computing today in your business?” Nearly every hand in the vast auditorium went up. “It’s the fastest growing segment of our industry,” he said. “Nothing touches social in our industry.” CEOs believe that conversations on social networks are one of the top ways for companies to engage with customers, he added, citing an IBM CEO study from 2012. Social interactions with coworkers, customers, and suppliers are altering the DNA of business itself. In light of that, Salesforce is “doubling down,” in Benioff’s words, on this social aspect of business. “This solidifies our vision, what we’re doing, why we’re here,” he said. The hundreds of hands raised in response to Benioff’s earlier question indicates that many businesses are, indeed, undergoing a “social” revolution, with their operations touched in some way by Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and similar services. But for Benioff, the interaction extends beyond people to machines and products. In a lengthy part of the keynote, he described how General Electric asked him to give a presentation on how the industry giant could evolve. He proposed something called “GE Share,” in which employees interacted not only with coworkers and customers, but also with the products under development. A GE engineer could “collaborate” with an engine via status updates, before bringing in other engineers, end users, and others to discuss and network over the data. But that's a vision of the future still very much in development. For the here-and-now, Salesforce revealed some of its latest products:
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff onstage at the Dreamforce ’12 conference.[/caption] SAN FRANCISCO—Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the stage to kick off the Dreamforce ’12 conference at the Moscone Center here, pushing a vision of the public cloud as the best foundation for modern business processes. His keynote address started in a way familiar to anyone who’s seen a Benioff speech over the past few years, with a brief description of how the computing world has evolved from mainframes to PCs and from there to a more mobile-centric paradigm centered on the cloud. As he waded off the stage into the crowd, he launched into how a “social revolution” is changing both the computing world and society at large. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to our industry,” he said. “How many of you use social media or social networking or some aspect of social computing today in your business?” Nearly every hand in the vast auditorium went up. “It’s the fastest growing segment of our industry,” he said. “Nothing touches social in our industry.” CEOs believe that conversations on social networks are one of the top ways for companies to engage with customers, he added, citing an IBM CEO study from 2012. Social interactions with coworkers, customers, and suppliers are altering the DNA of business itself. In light of that, Salesforce is “doubling down,” in Benioff’s words, on this social aspect of business. “This solidifies our vision, what we’re doing, why we’re here,” he said. The hundreds of hands raised in response to Benioff’s earlier question indicates that many businesses are, indeed, undergoing a “social” revolution, with their operations touched in some way by Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and similar services. But for Benioff, the interaction extends beyond people to machines and products. In a lengthy part of the keynote, he described how General Electric asked him to give a presentation on how the industry giant could evolve. He proposed something called “GE Share,” in which employees interacted not only with coworkers and customers, but also with the products under development. A GE engineer could “collaborate” with an engine via status updates, before bringing in other engineers, end users, and others to discuss and network over the data. But that's a vision of the future still very much in development. For the here-and-now, Salesforce revealed some of its latest products:
