With Halloween now behind us, we are fast approaching the silly/holiday season!  This week’s wrap up we have Salesforce getting into the Halloween spirit with Salesforce Tower turning into the ‘Fiery Eye of Sauron’! (Hopefully just for Halloween and not the start of something more! )  Also in this post, we have a Dreamforce wrap-up for you, so if like me you missed it, you can catch up on all the happenings earlier in the month.

Salesforce Tower gets turned into the ‘Fiery Eye of Sauron’

After a petition gathered pace and received over 11,000 signatures – Salesforce turned Salesforce Tower into a spooky sight for Halloween…

For those who haven’t read the books or watched the movies, ‘Fiery Eye of Sauron’ is a reference from the Lord of the Rings.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”BrockKeelingTweet-Halloween”]

Though it would be interesting to know how/who managed to convince Marc Benioff of this idea, as he seemed against it at the start of the month telling CurbedSF, “I would prefer for it to become a signal for Batkid as our city needs a lot of love right now.”

Read more at SFGate or NBC.

Dreamforce wrap-up

So as another year wraps up, another massive Dreamforce is now done and dusted for 2018!  To wrap up on all things Dreamforce 2018, there are a number of key resources to check out!  (Unfortunately I wasn’t able to personally attend this year).

• David Liu over at SFDC99 gives us his wrap up and learnings from the event.
• Jen Lee also has a post covering off all her sessions from Dreamforce, if you interested in anything automation/flow, it is well worth the look!
• SalesforceWeek.ly also covered the Dreamforce keynote with a hilarious Fact Check: Dreamforce Keynote.
• ZDNet has a Dreamforce recap on ai, automation and integration.
• CRN has a ‘5 things we learned at Dreamforce’ recap.
• And the official recap from Salesforce also gives a brief overview of all the happenings from the week.

But one session I live for each and every year is ‘True to the Core’ with Parker Harris.  (So much so, I will be doing a recap of the video some point in the near future! Similar to last year’s post…)

If you have never seen this session before, you need to!   It covers the roadmap and upcoming direction for the various elements across the Salesforce platform…

Best Podcasts for Salesforce Admins

Also this week, I stumbled across a great list of podcasts for the Salesforce #AwesomeAdmin within you!  If you looking for new podcasts to listen to on the way to work… Live the Salesforce dream and tune in 🙂

Personally, I would also add ‘The Wizard News’ to this list for an entertaining and often LOL-funny listen on all things within the Salesforce world…

The SAP vs Salesforce battle continues…

Is this really even a battle?  SAP announced a number of ‘victories’ over Salesforce recently…

Personally I don’t want to discount SAP, but having worked with CRM teams who manage SAP systems, and my own experience of Salesforce… I still feel there is a really large gap between the platforms.  But never stop watching, as a tighter contest in the CRM space, could lead to more innovation given the scale and size of the competitors in this market.

https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2018/10/10/is-sap-tilting-at-salesforce-crm-crown/

Marc Benioff in the headlines

The man at the helm of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, is a very interesting character.  He definitely knows how to generate a headline, but often for a good cause.  Generally he tries to be the change he wants to see in the world.

Over the last couple of weeks he is trying to focus attention on the homelessness issue in San Francisco, tackling other tech entrepreneurs on how to best try to solve the issue.  It is a long-standing and complex issue, so there surely isn’t just one way to try to tackle this issue, but it is great to see this being focused on.

Additionally CNN Business also wrote a profile piece on Marc this month, which covers some of his other philanthropic efforts.

This week in Salesforce Briefs, we jump into the latest news from the Salesforce ecosystem.  This week we see Salesforce back on the acquisition path acquiring Attic Labs.  Salesforce also not happy with resting on its laurels, has also has announced plans to be a $64B company.

To top it off this week, the move into Salesforce Tower has begun and we also learn that Salesforce is planning to ditch the Oracle databases…  So read on for all things Salesforce this week.

First acquisition of 2018: Salesforce buys Attic Labs

Remember the buying spree Salesforce went on in 2016?  Part of that buying spree, was the acquisition of Quip for US$750m.  But today, Salesforce announced a new companion to the Quip family by buying Attic Labs.

Who are they?  Well Attic Labs had an open-source product called Noms.

Aside from a cute logo, Salesforce bought Attic Labs for the product itself which is a decentralised database.  Allowing users to synchronise any changes made to a shared document, even when a users are offline for any duration of time.

If you have seen any demo of Quip, one of the platforms key features is the ability to share documents and sync changes.  So Noms will no doubt allow Salesforce to take the Quip platform even further in the future.

(Refer Crunchbase for more.)

Salesforce revenue growth targets… Target for $60b set!

Salesforce has never hidden its lofty ambitions when it comes to revenue targets.  Announcing at Dreamforce this year they on track for the $10b revenue target for FY17/18.  But in news this week, Salesforce are setting their revenue target that by 2034 they will achieve $60b in revenue!

Personally my mind can’t even comprehend that figure.  That is the GDP of a small country!  Luxemberg, Panama, Costa Rico and Uruguay all have around $60b in projected GDP for 2017.  And that $60b is Salesforce’s own revenue target, not how much the Salesforce ecosystem would contribute across the world…

(Read more over on Techcrunch.)

Salesforce move into Salesforce Tower

Salesforce started the process of moving into the new Salesforce Tower in San Francisco this week.  The 61 story building, which towers over the San Francisco skyline is anything but ordinary.  So in typical Salesforce fashion, it wasn’t any ordinary office relocation.

To mark the occasion Salesforce had a DJ on-site to help get the party started, staff had an opportunity to also dance next to an augmented reality version of Cody.  I mean who wouldn’t want to dance alongside an augmented reality version of Cody?

What a way to start your day in a new office!? 🙂

(Read more here.)

Salesforce to ditch Oracle?

Since time began (well at least for our Salesforce-world), Salesforce and Oracle have been at loggerheads with each other… Well more so Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison.  But truth be told, underneath Salesforce is an Oracle database powering every transaction that gets processed.

Salesforce has been using Oracle technology to build the Force.com platform, and in the process still contribute hefty sums of money to Oracle’s revenue.  Due to this system architecture – which sits underneath Salesforce’s own platform – there are a number of limitations to what Salesforce can ultimately develop.

This can explain some of the ideas we see on the IdeaExchange, and why we think it could be such a simple change to make, it still seems to stall and not get delivered. You can listen a panel allude to some of the restraints they have on the platform in the True to the Core discussion from Dreamforce this year.  Along with a number of really useful insights into the future of Force.com as a platform…

But getting back on track, the tide might be turning and Salesforce is apparently looking to develop its own base database and remove Oracle from the picture.  What this means in the long term, should be a more responsive platform overall and give Salesforce more flexibility with their own platform.

(Read more from CNBC or CNBC.)