It's Dreamforce, but not as we know it
Dreamforce
Usually 150,000 + in person attendees over 4 days, Dreamforce 2021 was 1,000 attendees over two days, but with live streaming and on-demand content on the new Salesforce+ streaming service. I’m pleased that Salesforce didn’t continue the industry trend of copying the in-person conference on a digital platform - while this was okay for the first year of pandemic times, it was getting a bit samey. Salesforce+ isn’t perfect, but at least they came up with something different. You can find all of the content on the Salesforce+ Dreamforce page.
No surprise that the main story was closer integration with Slack. What did surprise me is the amount of the functionality from the Salesforce UI that is being made available in Slack - there seems to be a concerted effort to stop people having to login to Salesforce for the simple stuff.
The trusted enterprise featured a lot at Dreamforce too - socially conscious investors are getting more interested in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) propositions, and Benioff was quick to announce that Salesforce has achieved net zero. The big four accounting firms are looking to hire tens if not hundreds of thousands of consultants over the next 5 years, with a particular focus on ESG, so this is clearly a growth area.
Not everyone is on the Dreamforce bandwagon though - The Register typically aren’t huge fans, and this year was no different.
Salesforce
We all knew this was coming, but great to see it.
Amidst the noise of Dreamforce, Salesforce launched Backup and Restore. In my last post I mentioned that I couldn’t understand why Salesforce weren’t offering this, but I didn’t expect it to change quite so quickly. This is probably not what the likes of OwnBackup wanted to see, but I’m fairly sure the Salesforce offering will be aimed at the low hanging fruit rather than those wanting a sophisticated solution.
Bret Taylor is in demand with Salesforce customers it appears - Marc Benioff regularly leaves him to the difficult conversations, which is a sure sign of trust. Would you want to be the one after Benioff, or the one after the one after? Following a larger than life, highly successful leader is never easy, and the immediate successor is often judged harshly - just ask David Moyes!
Other
An interesting article on workflow being the next enterprise cloud war - there’s a lot of investment pouring into this area from a number of companies, which can only be good for customers.
Zoom looks like sticking around after the pandemic. If the future of work turns out to be hybrid, they’ve made some good investments.
Me
I’m very keen on Dynamic Interactions, which will be GA in Winter 22. We’re getting closer to a completely custom UI creating using drag and drop tools, although still no sign of overriding a specific field on record create.