“Isn’t this an unbelievable dream already…?” asks Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff as he takes the stage for the keynote at Dreamforce 2015 in San Francisco. Getting to the business side of the presentation after a traditional Hawaiian blessing and a mini-concert by Stevie Wonder who sings, “Dreamforce is the sunshine of my life,” Benioff takes a moment to say thank you to Salesforce customers, partners, and employees telling them, “It is amazing what kind of company you have created.”

Announcing that in 2016 Salesforce will be the fourth largest software company in the world, after Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, Benioff says that Salesforce has created not only a new business model, but a new philanthropic model, and that he can look back with no regrets because the company was “built the right way.”

The Lightning Experience

With a flash, Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris leaps to the stage dressed as ‘Lightning Man,’ and the duo kick off a rundown of new products and features from Salesforce with a discussion on new functionalities in the Salesforce Lightning Platform.

Harris describes Lightning as the “biggest thing since they started the company” and demonstrates the new interface that allows drag and drop customization, pipeline view, and can be delivered via the Salesforce cloud platform to all devices.

Describing it as a fast to build, super easy, eco-system Harris says that they “did not just add a new skin,” but “rebuilt from ground up as a platform.” In addition, Salesforce has added two new apps for the verticals group built on Lightning Salesforce Financial Services Cloud and Salesforce Health Cloud, and introduced the Trailhead online training system – a “fun easy way to learn Salesforce fast.”

“Salesforce is your assistant”

Exchanging his Lighting bolt for an ‘IQ stick’ Harris introduces SalesforceIQ for Salescloud and small business, announcing a move “from relationship management to relationship intelligence.” Describing salespeople as “relationship people who don’t want to log information,” Benioff and Harris explain how the new SalesforceIQ connects CRM to email messages, calendar events, and contacts, and applies intelligence to pro-actively scan and linking information. As an example, an email from a client asking, “Can we connect to discuss contract?” automatically schedules a meeting with suggested time, attendees, and locations. An optional plug-in allows the CRM functions to be applied with Gmail accounts, and all functions are available on mobile devices.

IoT cloud for Thunder: Internet of Things (and customers)

Waving a glowing hammer and with a loud clap that shakes the building, Harris introduces the IoT (Internet of Things) cloud powered by the Thunder platform. Emphasizing that behind technology there is a customer, Harris describes the IoT cloud for Thunder as the “integration between innovation and customer experience,” that allows a business to manage the process of how the customer is using their product.

Using an example from launch partner, Microsoft, Benioff and Harris run through a demonstration that shows how the IoT cloud for Thunder allows a business to CAPTURE individual customer events in real-time, TRIGGER the one-to-one real-time intelligent rules engine, and ENGAGE customers one-to-one with personalized communications and reminders. In the demonstration, a new customer downloading Office 365 has events (such as the download and install) captured by Azure, and sent to the Salesforce IoT cloud where the intelligent rules engine analyzes them and automatically triggers actions such as sending an email reminding the customer to download accompanying mobile apps to their phone.

“We are connecting to customers in a whole new way, and doing it with Microsoft,” says Benioff, who is joined on the stage by Microsoft Chairman, John Thompson. Asked by Benioff what he sees as the visions for the future, Thompson describes a world in which more data and more services continue to be available through the transition to the Internet of Things. He describes the real opportunity as changing the lives of people everywhere on the planet, saying, “We will make the ubiquity of computing available to everyone on the planet.”

Photos by SiliconANGLE