Happy New Year & Welcome to Salesforce1
Happy New Year, it looks like the dust has finally settled after November’s Dreamforce and we are left with one thing in our spinning in our heads, Salesforce1. If your New Year’s resolution is learn more about Salesforce1 then here is quick take on Salesforce1.
Salesforce always have one big announcement at their annual Dreamforce events, we had “Marketing Cloud” a few years back, then before that the “Social Enterprise”, this year they unwrapped “Salesforce1” along with the a great new tag line the “Internet of Customers”, Salesforce’s play on the “Internet of Things”, and a clever one at that.
The Salesforce1 announcement is about much more than cool technology, it’s the unification of many existing things in the Salesforce ecosystem as well as new:
- Mobile Apps
- Platforms
- Strategies
All these areas are now nicely wrapped into one simple brand: Salesforce1.
Mobile takes front stage, Salesforce has an array of mobile apps, Salesforce Classic, Chatter, Touch; at times it’s difficult to know which one will work best for your needs. Some of these apps will continue to exist in some form or another, however it’s clear we should be focusing on the new Salesforce1 mobile experience, after all we are now living in a mobile first world.
Most existing users of the Chatter mobile app will automatically get Salesforce1 if they have enabled auto-updates on their iOS and Android devices. The old Chatter app gets magically replaced with a shiny redesigned icon and blessed with the words Salesforce1. The typography will remind you of something else: yes, it looks a lot like Apple’s iOS7. Nice!
Accompanying the new Salesforce1 app, administrators now get mobile administration in the shape of SalesforceA. SalesforceA is functional administration app allowing you to manage your Salesforce users on the go, and long overdue.
I am yet to fully explore all the functionality of the new mobiles apps, but it’s a bold move by Salesforce opening up more of the platform and Force.com than ever before. I will be sharing future experiences as we explore these in depth over the next few months.
Next let’s take a look at the platforms behind Salesforce1.
Salesforce could have simply stopped with new mobile apps, but instead they continued on the unification process and rebranded all the different platforms as the “Salesforce 1 Platform” and coined the phrase “The Customer Platform” which nicely aligns with the new “Internet of Customers” message. Marketing at its best!
The Salesforce 1 Platform is now an umbrella for all the main platforms owned by Salesforce:
Force.com – what we know, love and trust!
heroku.com – the new edition of Heroku, which promises to finally addresses the challenges of integrating and synchronising data with Salesforce
Then the third and newest platform, and one I know the least about:
ExactTarget Fuel – this sounds like the secret sauce for integrating and extending its marketing functionality and content out to every corner of the connected world. Cannot wait to take a closer look.
It’s clear that platform is king and API’s rule, Salesforce promises to deliver 10x more APIs across all their platforms and new features will be built with API first in mind. It was already great for developers and ISVs, but now it just got more interesting. More APIs can only be a good thing, allowing innovation to take a front seat, driving rapid adoption across a multitude of devices and at lightning speed.
We are unarguably living in a mobile-first world; we didn’t need Salesforce to tell us this. The proof is there and it’s woven into our daily lifes. Most people both young and old reach first for their mobile device instead of a PC. Armed with our mobile devices, we capture and react to situations, share experiences, and make purchases – i.e.we are being a customer, which is ultimately what businesses want!
You have to take your hat off to Salesforce, they are always early adopters when it comes to pivoting their business in the direction of the next big future trends in order to stay way ahead of their competition.
It’s never been a more exciting time to be involved with salesforce.com and even more so now with Salesforce1 – “The Customer Platform” designed to be Mobile and Api first.