The Six Five Team discusses Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 San Francisco.
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Transcript:
Patrick Moorhead: Salesforce Dreamforce 2023, San Francisco. There is so much talk about, but as you would expect, the highlight of this was all about generative AI. It was about the data, the AI technologies, the CRM applications that go into it and with a focus on trust. Super interesting. Salesforce is trying to own the trusted peg and it’s going to be interesting versus their biggest competitors. Can they own it? On one side, I felt like they were talking to their customer base, Dan, as opposed to trying to get more business. They didn’t really tell as aggressive or compelling a story on moving business to Salesforce, as I thought, motivating their current customer base to use more or more modules.
I want to stick to my guns here on they do tell a very good trust story and they were the first company that I had encountered that got into the mechanics of how they ground data, how they essentially discard any of that grounded data out there to make you feel good. But Dan, I can’t get off of this, 75 to 90% of data is still on-prem. How does Salesforce move that? I know there’s MuleSoft, I know there’s linkages, but the companies that they rolled out are not the companies as partners on the data side that actually have this data. They rolled out Snowflake, they rolled out Databricks. Those companies don’t have the 75 to 95, 90% of that data. It’s easy, it’s low hanging fruit.
But this is part of my research that I’m going to get underneath. But by the way, the examples that they showed across the entire Einstein platform that, by the way, you have a copilot for each one of these, sales, service, marketing, commerce, analytics and platform is very compelling, albeit in my opinion, focused on current customers and motivate them to do something.
To go for the big nut, they’re going to have to answer the question and they’re going to have to motivate people to act dramatically differently. Dan, we’re 14 years into the public cloud and here we are, 75% of data is still on-prem. That is the big win. The other question I’m trying to get underneath is… Salesforce showed us this in their vision video, is how you pull ERP data and legal data and IP data into this. Where’s that data going to be coming from? Their vision reinforces my question, but all in all, it was just an amazing event. It was my first on-prem, in-person Dreamforce and I will have my write-up soon.
Daniel Newman: Same here. Yeah, I’ll definitely be publishing something in the near future. It was the world’s largest AI event and depending on how you classify that might be right. CES might be bigger, but is that an AI event? Okay. In good news, San Francisco held up pretty clean. I had the chance to meet some luminaries at a Time 100 luncheon. That was pretty exciting. By the way, I didn’t make the list so it wasn’t that exciting.
Patrick Moorhead: Darn it.
Daniel Newman: I know. I’m happy for you, buddy. I’m happy for you. All right.
Patrick Moorhead: Top 100, you’re on the top 10 Air Insights AI people.
Daniel Newman: That’s right.
Patrick Moorhead: Bob and Maribel.
Daniel Newman: Einstein has come back and it’s finally ready. You know what they say sometimes, “I’m early, but I’m not wrong,”? Well, the first iteration of Einstein was early and you could argue maybe it wasn’t right yet, but the Einstein platform now is truly enabling the data cloud and the opportunity for generative tools. Is this the end all be all? No, of course it’s not. But the integrations are there. The company is building with its own data services. It’s got Tableau, it’s got integrations to get Google Workspace. It’s got M 365. But Pat, maybe the biggest thing for me since I’ve got to kind of be concise here was I think Slack is a powerhouse and it’s underestimated how big of a capability Slack has to actually take Salesforce into a more competitive future. Why do I say that? Because the way we’re going to interact with our data in the future is going to be more generative.
It’s going to be more natural language, it’s going to be more conversational. Right now, Salesforce, that’s not how you interact with it. But in the future, could you be in Slack and could you be talking to it or chatting to it like we do to a chatbot or like we do to find out the data, the reports, and the things that we need to know? You bring up a great point about the connectors, MuleSoft creating a harmonized data platform that enables companies to benefit from all their data. I think interestingly, as large language models progress, foundational models get smaller and you can then actually tap data in a more fluid network with less latency, the possibility of being able to get enough data into the public cloud to then talk to your data that’s sitting on-prem is plausible. It will be work to be done.
But again, you don’t need all the data. We know this. You need some of the data and more importantly, you need the right data. Connecting the front end, Salesforce has got it nailed. Connecting the backend, there is some work to do to get access to all the data, but of course, you’re not doing everything in Salesforce. This is customer service, marketing and business intelligence right now. You can still do a lot of things over in your ERP and then you can funnel certain things through connectors over to your front end.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
