Dreamforce 14: Live Blogging the Benioff Keynote #df14

The enormous crowd here is streaming into the main keynote with Marc Benioff here at Moscone Center on Tuesday. it’s nearly 1pm PT and the main hall is filing up quickly. I’ll live blog the event here as much as possible given that the Ethernet for industry analysts isn’t working, but the private Wifi is, so hopefully we’ll get most of what goes on here.

The biggest announcement so far, out of many, has been Salesforce’s entry into the analytics and big data space, with their new Wave product. You can get a overview of the details on Wave from Larry Dignan on ZDNet and I’m sure we’ll hear about it much more during the next few hours.

I’m also expecting the following during the keynote today: 1) A roundup and year-over-year update on Salesforce1 and its ecosystem, with lots of customer examples, 2) an overview of Wave (or its “Analytics Cloud“) and the many 3rd party relationships they’ve already established, and 3) an even clearer and bigger vision for the Salesforce cloud. And plenty of philanthropy, maybe some politics, and of course, perhaps some colorful Christian Louboutin shoes.

Additional Reading: My analysis of Salesforce’s announcements and strategic direction this week.

1:11pm: The main hall doesn’t look full yet, but there’s definitely a lot of people vying for the desks in the analyst press area.

1:13pm: Now the always-excellent Peter Coffee is up doing a preamble on the keynote. Talking the usual bit about “amazing customers doing amazing things and bringing you in the next generation of technologies.” Introducing the CIO of Telstra, who is talking about “creating a brilliantly connected future for everyone.”

1:18pm: Just introduced the CIO of Eli Lilly talking with how Deloitte Digital is “helping them architect faster and faster.” Talking about helping in compliance, manufacturing, inventory, and HR processes and gets the ROI faster using the Force platform. Coffee now talking about health and life sciences, where customer experiences for pharma apps are going right to the doctors.

1:22pm: Now have the a Hawaiian band on stage conducting a musical interlude. Didn’t catch the band name.

1:26pm: Coffee: “One of the great things about Dreamforce is that you run into amazing people in the hallways.” He says he just ran into George Zimmer in the halls (the famous voice and founder formerly of the Men’s Wearhouse), who is now talking about his new business. The new business will be “high touch and high tech. Just like Salesforce with 1-1-1, and we’ll make sure we value our customers, shareholders, and communities just like Salesforce.” Coffee asks when we’re going to hear about it. Sometime in the next few months, he says watch his Twitter account.

1:29pm: Now the Group CIO of Caterpillar is up, along with his Accenture sponsor. “Have been using Salesforce for many years, but has been fragmented across many operating groups.” Accenture is providing the frameworks and processes to sort out a more consistent CRM implementation. Coffee: “New ways of things for a company doing what’s it been doing for a long time.” Says, “people want new ways to re-engineer what they’re doing”. Paul Daugherty, CTO, Group Chief Executive of Technology at Accenture is now talking “taking things to the next level, and industry solutions they bake onto the Salesforce platform. Connected products and connected dealers that they’re helping Caterpillar ‘bringing to life’ using the Force.com platform. A good management consulting quote from Coffee: “Turning from a products focus to an outcome focus.”

1:36pm: Now the chief strategist (I think) of Salesforce is talking with Coffee about how the Salesforce platform is evolving into many new disciplines, including supply chain. Coffee asking about what areas to focus on and follow up on later, including a Mystery X product that keeps being referenced. Says to be sure to watch what’s going on with the marketing cloud, Internet of Connected Customers, analytics products (Wave I assume). Now welcoming the Ambassadors of Aloha from the island of Hawaii.

1:44pm: Now welcoming the (for real) Beach Boys, who are playing live, on the musical stage.

1:47pm: The band is a wrap, and they’re getting a big hand from the crowd. And the whole center goes dark, ominous music playing.

1:48pm:  Voice in the dark with lasers coming out: “In the beginning it was simple. Few things were connected. Individual voices were silenced. And you could buy yourself to a leadership position with traditional ads. Then it all changed. Every industry is being disrupted, and everyone and everything is being connected. It’s the single most powerful, innovative time in the history of technology. Worlds of opportunity are begin created daily. billions of products and devices are being created. Everyone has a super computer in their pocket.”

1:49pm: “Introducing the customer success platform.” Clearly some optimistic new product branding. Talking about creating custom scaled 1-to-1 customer experiences, team empowerment, build mobile apps for every aspect of your business, and deploy “instantly” across “every single” device. Talking about watches, kiosks, and other new devices. Sales, service, marketing, community, analytics, and apps. “The New Salesforce”, again mentioning it as the customer success platform.

1:52pm: Marc Benioff just walked onstage and said “Aloha” to the whole crowd. “We’re here to excite you, educate you, entertain you, inspire you.” Thanking everyone at the conference, especially customers. Walking around the crowd, saying 1,450 sessions and 145,000 people registered. 400+ companies, and 5 million people joining the event online. Mentioning that Tony Robbins and Hillary Clinton having spoken yesterday. Notes that Grammy winning music star, Wil.i.am, will launch his company here tomorrow.

2:05pm: Just did an extensive video  about Salesforce’s philanthropic activities. Now has the Superintendent of San Francisco Schools, and the Mayor Lee of San Francisco. Lee is thanking Marc for starting Salesforce in San Francisco, and setting the gold standard for philanthropy, and setting the bar for business and government working together. A pretty good inspirational overview of how the public schools, city government, and the Salesforce Foundation.

2:14pm: Just welcomed Will.i.am onstage. Marc is asking him what his insights into public education. Will.i.am says how he was disadvantaged, says his schooling was critical to understand his situation in life. Says that after he “made” it, he realized there was a challenge with magnet schools in California and wanted to help. Talking about meeting the Waiting for Superman maker, and asking about robotics programs, students using ESRI, about kids going to China with the State Department and learning Mandarin, and other commendable outcomes. Now talking about paying in forward, and his new company, which apparently has an API and SDK. Appears to be an app on a new wearable device. Says it will be credible and will present it here tomorrow, though media predictions are mixed. He says he funded it, founded it, and surrounded himself with engineers. Says it’s critical that we aren’t hypocritical when we ask others to do something hard, that he is learning science, mathematics, and engineering for the product, and ‘I’m from the projects’, saying anyone can do it too.

2:20pm: Beach Boys playing Good Vibrations.

2:25pm: Marc talking about his first mainframe terminal. How the work of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates turned into millions of PCs around the world. Now those millions are turning into billions of computers. 5 billion mobile devices already exist. Talking about cards connected, toothbrushes connected, wearables. “Everything is getting hooked up.” And that is turning into “trillions of customer interactions.” There is now an imperative of engagement, to connect. Our vision is to build that platform for our customers to connect. “If you connect deeply, build a 1-on-1 relationship with your customers” in scale, then that leads to success. Talking about bringing all of customer information together.

2:30pm: Talking about the Berluti store when Marc moved to Europe recently. Salesperson comes up to him with an iPhone. Salesperson figures out who he is by using an app, which was Salesforce1. Asks him “does he have a suit for Dreamforce?” Which Marc is currently wearing onstage. “It wasn’t just a suit he sold me, but it was a whole relationship.” Talking about going to visit Philips and their new ultrasound machine. Screen over the stage says there will be 75 billion connected products by 2015. Talking about how services and partners are so deeply integrated. Now saying how much he likes hit Fitbit, and his community rankings.  Talking about a community of users for Home Depot at community.homedepot.com that is “inspiring us on what we can all do to bring together our customers, partners, and employees.”

2:35pm: Now talking about Neil Young’s Pono high resolution music player and service. It will apparently be launched here at Dreamforce on Thursday. And Neil built community as an integrated part of the product. Now talking about going to Berlin and Coca-Cola, and talking about being out with the customers. Said to Marc “everything in my company is mobile, all my employees, customers, and consumers on mobile.” And did this with Salesforce1. And it struck Marc that Coca-Cola has become a software company, a cloud company. “Everyone is in our business now. Its great.” Saying the 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years. Saying there is a “data divide.” Data products of the past, mentioning companies like IBM, SAP, and Oracle, and it’s “no surprise they are turning over all their CEOs.” Says, “what we need is a ‘Wave.” (Marc is walking amongst the crowd as he says all this.)

2:40pm: Talking about Wave, as an analytics service that is “for everyone.” Note: That big data services must be enabled for everyone is something I’ve emphasized for years. And it’s a mobile-first app. And for the developers they work with, “we want to build a platform where we have all these analytics apps.” Says its “analytics for the rest of us.” Going to profile a company that they’ve worked with for 10 years, who was a partner. The partner is General Electric. Now showing a video about what they did. Voiceover: “We don’t have a luxury of weeks to months to create a new products. To try new things in the marketplace. That’s where innovation comes from. Being a builder, not just a banker.” Taking about shortening cycle times from months to seconds using Analytics Cloud. “Analytics is not longer just the domain of experts, but is now in the hands of everyone.” Very simple, very fast. “This is the platform that lets the business start to use information that matters for them and their customers.” Made a very careful statement about how it’s all secure as well. “Mobile right out of the box.” Wherever you may be, you can pull up the analytics that you need. You can mark it up and comments, and everyone can see it immediately. Beyond banking, financial serfices, “should be key for every company in the world.” “Operating at the speed of thought.”

2:46pm: Marc is back on now that the video is over. Going over Service Cloud and business objects. The visionary behind Wave: “Please welcome Alex Dayon, President, Products.” About to unveil Wave, to “bring all your data together in one central place.” GE Capital is the case study they will examine. Starting the demo. Going over the features of Wave, saying “analytics has to be fun to use.” They built Wave on tops of Salesforce1. Lots of detailed demos of Wave, including building dashboards and sharing analytics.

2:45pm: The Wave demo continues. Now doing a scenario with Brunswick, and there is an actual powerboat with the CEO of Brunswick, and they are playing out a scenario, projecting Wave data using Airplay on a TV to make a mock case for why they need to make more boats. “Wave has been designed for everyone. Every sales person, every services person, every executive.” Has the whole Wave team stand up. Has been working for two years on this project.” Alex wraps up the Wave section by jumping on a surfboard. Now the Beach Boys are back up singing “Catch a Wave.”

3:01pm: Marc has returned. Says “everything is going mobile. Everyone knows that. I run my whole business on mobile. Everyone knows that too.” Says, however, it’s not enough. “We need to build mobile apps faster. Build more apps.” “The story of Coca-Cola inspired me that it could be done.” And now giving us a video tour of Coca-Cola Germany, and how they accelerated their mobile app creation process. Talking about connectivity, scalability, and collaboration. “Everyone has to know everything about the customer. This is only possible with a fully connected platform.” Says, “we can see everything at the same time, using Salesforce.com.” “If a shipment goes wrong, the customer will see it, the salesperson will see it, and I will see it.” Theme: We are only limited by our ideas now, not the technology.

3:07pm: Marc now talking about stats on Salesforce1: 10X APIs, 4M+ apps built, 84K companies using the Salesforce 1app. “But it’s crystal clear, from talking with many of you: We have to move faster.” New devices coming next year, like the Apple Watch, will further drive demand. “Wave was the first product we announced.” “The second major product we announced is Lightning.” “Please welcome, my co-founder, Parker Harris.” Parker is coming out in a Lightning super hero costume.

3:10pm: Parker Harris is now up and talking about Lightning. Platform services like Force.com, Heroku, and Wave are the bottom of the Lightning model. Lighting is three things: Tools to build mobile apps “lightning vast.” Includes visual builder. Don’t have to figure out iOS and Android. And includes an all new type of user interface, including the tablet in November, and the desktop next year. Will support watches, including Will.i.am’s new watch, which we’ll see here at Dreamforce tomorrow. Giving developers Lightning Components, Lightning Framework, and Lightning Builder. Using the creaky old “lego bricks” analogy for building applications. The new Lightning UI allows you to write and deploy applications once on any device, apparently with a responsive user interface that is suitable for the device’s form factor. Giving a product demo that shows situated business analytics using a fictional company called Westlane Cafe and managing its Coca-Cola supplies with a “red score” from the application. They are showing how fast you can develop apps, by editing it and add a virtual reality component to the application on the fly (for identifying where  the merchandise cooler should be physically placed in the store.) If it all works, it’s really pretty impressive.

3:21pm: Now Parker is going to actually build a Lightning application right with the audience live. Using the Lightning Builder, which has a palette of Lightning components. Says they are going to continue developing many new components, and developers can create their own. Making mention of AppExchange, such as pulling in a DocuSign component, which you can drag to your application, and “add document signing without writing a single line of code.” No app store review. A soon as the app is saved, everyone with Salesforce1 automatically has access to the application. The app is now built. Have shipping options, an navigable map, and interfaces for phone and tablet. Now says they are going to confirm a drone delivery of Coca-Cola right in the convention center directly in the newly built app. Sure enough, an actual drone comes into the convention center and delivers the coke directly to Parker (pic now below.)

3:31pm: Marc is back onstage and introduces a video about Honeywell and their connected devices. Discussing home monitoring, appliance control, real-time monitoring, dashboards of data for contractors. “Not as much about as connecting the home, as connecting the person.” We’re able to provide a much higher level of accurate diagnostics and customer service. It changes the whole relationship.” Every connected device puts together a contractor and a customer.” “Now we’re on a journey, we can create new software and services that we sell as subscription to contractors. Now we don’t just get revenue from hardware, but also software.” All supported with Salesforce platforms and apps.

3:36pm: Introducing Linda Crawford, EP & GM, Sales Cloud. Going to talk about the “customer success platform.” Lines between sales and marketing are clearly blurring. Key for these applications to work together on the customer success platform.” About to show us the Journey Builder, where you can map out your end-to-end engagement process with your customers. Showing us an onboarding journey. “As a customer, what we want when we do business with a new company?” Showing the welcome message from Honeywell. Invites you to download a customer app. Showing upsells. Continuing to do a detailed tour of Sales Cloud.

3:47pm: The detailed demos are proceeding. Linda now introduces us to Service Cloud1. Has personalization, any device, any time, anywhere. Now also introducing the Community Cloud. Optimized for search engines, personalized community content 1-to-1 to every member of a community, moderated feeds in a new console, and has visual design tools to “spin up communities faster than ever before.”

3:54pm: Now Honeywell is up talking about their connected home products strategy, with thermostats. Marc says we’re at the keynote. Talks about Bruno Mars tonight and the Will.i.am keynote tomorrow. “Thanks everybody.” It’s a wrap.

Additional reading:

Is the Internet of Things strategic to the enterprise? | ZDNet

My Dreamforce 14 presentation on the strategic use of Internet of Connected Products | Slideshare

Salesforce.com realigns Sales, Service clouds for connected apps | ZDNet

My previous Dreamforce live blogs:

Dreamforce 12: Live Blogging the Benioff Keynote

Dreamforce 11: Live Blogging the Benioff Keynote