Every time we return, Dreamforce is a new adventure. And this year, Dreamforce did not disappoint. After a decade of attending Dreamforce, the event still has the same wonder and excitement as it did the first time– even now being 15x the size. My personal experience this year was a great one, mostly because of the fact that everyone is there. The people you’ve been working with (or hoping to) are now in one location. So if you need to meet someone, you’re likely to find them in San Francisco!
This year I left thinking a lot about the concept of the Salesforce Economy. After a decade of working in the space, the numbers have always been up, up, up– but, I hadn’t thought too much about how much things could grow. A few slides were presented in the various keynotes which indicate, beyond any shadow of a doubt that Salesforce is here to stay, and is now a global and dominant player in the space amongst the Top 5 tech companies in the world.
Salesforce does a great job covering the topic on this blog
Fueling the economy, the age of the Trailblazer is here.
Salesforce did a great job shining a light on people winning building careers on Salesforce. The entire event was Trailblazer themed with content in almost every keynote on the various ways to get up to speed on the technology. All of which you can do from your desk, for free– and now, Mobile! I’ve enjoyed watching Trailhead grow from an idea, to a great intro, to a fully fleshed LMS. Most exciting for me was the announcements of some partnerships for syndicated content on Trailhead. Particularly, with Amazon announcing a series of modules on how to use AWS. Check out Trailhead if you haven’t yet.
Salesforce wants to be your Business Operating System.
With major partnerships announced or expanded with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, Salesforce is sending a clear message: We are a part of every company’s infrastructure and want to play nice. I’d say some older messaging was a bit more iconoclastic and attributable to Salesforce being more of an upstart, but the messaging now is “We’ve grown up. We’re here to stay. We are mature and our tech is a critical piece of infrastructure so we want to be easy to work with”. This is refreshing as a Salesforce Partner, it’s no longer an all-or-nothing proposal, but enterprise-scale best of breed. I believe this idea, of other systems contributing to an enterprise data-share is the core of what is now being called “Customer 360”. The acquisition of Mulesoft only adds more capability to the Salesforce’s technology and will enable easier integrations in the future. More details here.
As a partner, I’m seeing a great confluence of enablement and technology to make 2020 and beyond fantastic. Salesforce is helping build an army of professionals through Trailhead, Vetforce, and other training initiatives. The platform is continuing to evolve and expand in its capabilities and most notably, targeting interoperability with other tech. This will propel Salesforce as a critical business solution into the future. I’m happy to have attended Dreamforce this year to see some of these expansive themes opened up. I can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store!
