Dreamforce, the biggest tech conference of the year, happened on November 19-22 in San Francisco, California at the Moscone Center.
Every year, Dreamforce comes up with the exciting announcements of several new products, strategic partnerships, and key innovations that are rolled out by Salesforce. This year’s Dreamforce was majorly focused on using business as a platform for change across equality, sustainability, and climate.
Key Announcements at Dreamforce 2019 include:
- A new partnership with Apple;
- Salesforce Customer 360 Data Manager;
- Artificial Intelligence Improvements;
- MuleSoft’s New Tools, Learning Modules, and more.
Key Highlights and Takeaways from Dreamforce 2019
- Marc Benioff was interrupted during his speech by the protestors
Marc Benioff, the co-CEO and Chairman of Salesforce, was interrupted various times by protesters during his keynote speech on Tuesday. He gave 30 seconds to the protestor to say his part before he was escorted. The protestor spoke about Salesforce’s controversial contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
After listening to the protestor, Benioff Said: “I want to tell you why I stopped the program and let him talk for 30 seconds because I value freedom of expression in this country, I respect everyone’s words,”. Benioff talked about Salesforce as a platform that could provide “a single source of truth” by combining its core CRM functionalities with the latest acquisitions of Mulesoft and Tableau.
The latest Customer 360 Truth announced by Salesforce during Dreamforce is a new set of capabilities that allows companies to build a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships. It brings together data from sales, customer service, marketing, commerce and external sources (via Mulesoft) to create a single, universal Salesforce ID for each customer.
- Tableau, the newest addition to the Salesforce family
Salesforce welcomed the recent acquisition: Tableau, the analytics vendor, acquired by the company as part of an all-equity deal for $15.7 billion in May this year. Salesforce chairman and co-CEO Marc Benioff kicked off the day by welcoming the Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky to the Ohana.
CEO Adam Salipski called it a “natural combination” to join the Salesforce family, before moving further to a brief introduction to the Tableau proposition without going into any detail regarding product roadmaps and opportunities for deeper integration into the Salesforce stack.
- Apple partnership
Salesforce announced the general availability of several new features, such as a revamped Salesforce Mobile application, and the new Trailhead GO training application. It also announced the enhanced Salesforce Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) that would enable developers to build and deploy iOS applications on the Salesforce platform.
Apple CEO Tim Cook joined Benioff at Dreamforce 2019 to discuss how the company is focusing more on the enterprise and how Apple is committed to protecting user privacy. Benioff also admitted to Cook that he runs his business exclusively on his iPhone and hasn’t touched his laptop for years.
Environmental efforts and privacy were the most important concerns during the 30-minute fireside chat. The pair discussed on enterprise mobility, environmental sustainability, and highlighted Steve Jobs unveiling products on the same stage.
- Einstein Voice Enhancements
Salesforce has expanded the capabilities of Einstein Voice Assistant that enables customers to easily navigate cloud services automatically. With Einstein Voice Assistant, users can easily update Salesforce records and create tasks by using natural language requests. Furthermore, Salesforce also added Einstein’s voice skills so that developers and admins can create custom voice applications. Using Einstein Voice Skills, companies can create voice-powered applications for replacing mundane data entry operations or manual navigation in Salesforce.
Both Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills will be available in beta in February 2020. Most importantly, Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills will be compatible with a wide variety of devices, from smart speakers to smartphones, either Einstein Smart Speaker, the new Salesforce Mobile App, or customers’ preferred devices.
- AWS (Amazon Web Services) Partnership
Salesforce has made three announcements regarding its partnership with the public cloud provider Amazon Web Services, including a Contact Center Solution that connects Cloud Service and Amazon Connect. The introduction of an AWS pathway on the Trailhead training platform and an integration that allows users to ask questions about their Salesforce data using Einstein Voice Skills with Amazon Alexa devices.
Amazon Connect is a series of service centers that use AWS AI services such as transcription and translation to help service agents understand and respond to multiple channels.
Ariel Kelman, AWS Vice President said, “AWS and Salesforce have been in a deep relationship for years, and we are committed to integrating our services to provide industry-leading solutions.“
- Barack Obama’s Keynote at Dreamforce
Former U.S. President Barack Obama joined Salesforce founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff to discuss including philanthropy, climate change, and youth leadership. The session gained much popularity when the statesman talked about his efforts to support the next generation of leaders through the Obama Foundation.
In an interview with Marc Benioff, the former president discussed increasing inequality between and among countries. He said the evolution of modern technologies has worsened inequalities and societal divisions.
- Customer Perspectives
HSBC, one of the largest banking and financial services institutions in the world, has created an API portal for developers leveraging tools from Mulesoft and Salesforce.
Final Wrap
Dreamforce has remained the world’s biggest tech conference hosted by Salesforce that gathers more than 170,000 registered attendees and 13 million online viewers. From hands-on workshops to inspirational keynotes to networking sessions, there’s something for everyone to take away at Dreamforce.
Ajay Dubedi
CEO | Founder
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