November 17, 2011
The company that defined cloud-based Software as a Service is now looking to change the way workers collaborate, communicate and service their customers.
By John K. Waters - November 14, 2011
Resembling Steve Jobs at an Apple Inc. product launch one minute, Elmer Gantry at a gospel tent revival the next, Salesforce.com Inc. CEO Marc Benioff stalked the stage and roamed the audience as he pitched his company's next big idea at the annual Dreamforce conference. The enterprise needs to go social, Benioff declared, and Salesforce.com is the company to take it there.
"We were born cloud in 1999," he proclaimed, "but we've been reborn social."
While that has been the mantra for much of the past year, Benioff's appearance kicked into full gear the new direction for his company, which is putting its resources behind a portfolio of tools and services aimed at helping Salesforce.com customers leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to "revolutionize" their customer relationships. He compared this "enterprise social revolution" with political protests earlier this year in Egypt and Tunisia, and warned of a "Corporate Spring" for companies that fail to implement a social strategy.
