Season's Greetings
It might be Christmas Eve, but the Bob Buzzard Stack never sleeps, so here’s what has happened over the last couple of weeks.
Salesforce
The Spring 22 release notes are out in preview. As always, remember that features you read about now might not go live in Spring 22, or ever!
Ford is partnering with Salesforce to offer VIIZR. This looks pretty interesting, as it isn’t the vehicle specific offering I expected it to be. Instead it looks like a CRM/Field Service system that will be offered to sole traders/small businesses buying vehicles. Maybe a way for Salesforce to retain a foothold in the SMB market without actually selling to it.
While he might have a new co-CEO, Marc Benioff says he’s never leaving Salesforce. I can well believe this, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see him focus more on the activism/philanthropy side of things in the future.
Salesforce has acquired Tableau partner Narrative Science, who provide customers with insights into their data through story telling. Another step towards democratising all the things.
And not directly Salesforce, but in the ecosystem, Kenandy has been acquired by Rootstock.
Other
Low code continues to be a major growth area, with Airtable now valued at 11 billion.
While the pandemic continues to postpone the remote working wars, they are still simmering under the surface, with over half of workers saying they will quit if hybrid working goes away.
The biggest secret of 2021 is the stellar growth of the word ‘journey’ in conference calls - many of us would dream of 70% growth in a single year!
And finally, something that caught my eye in an article about the Metaverse - Eventbrite saw sales reduce by two-thirds in 2020, despite the number of events on its platform only reducing by 2%. Pretty damning stats for virtual events, albeit about the smallest sample size available.
Thanks!
That’s it for the stack for 2021, although you can expect some looking back content once I have time on my hands over the festive break. Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks for reading.