Salesforce kicked off its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco today with the announcement of a new cloud product for managing connected devices like mobile beacons, smart appliances, connected cars and game consoles.
The new IoT Cloud is designed to automate large-scale marketing applications that use connected devices, and connect them directly to the Salesforce platform. Using the familiar Salesforce events architecture, marketers can set up beacons or other devices to trigger events like messages and offers, alerts to sales reps or service calls. Salesforce has developed a new real-time event engine, Thunder, to chug through incoming data from connected devices (and from online datastreams, like e-commerce interactions) and identify what needs attention.
In a presentation at Dreamforce, executive vice-president, app cloud Tod Nielsen briefly outlined a test case with a smart thermostat manufacturer, which used IoT Cloud to track how its products were working in-market and alert customers when their device was malfunctioning or needed an update.
Nielsen promised that marketers would not need a data science team to operate the platform on their behalf.
“The IoT Cloud is actually usable by mere mortals,” he said. “It’s usable by people closest to the business, closest to their customers, to help make sure their company can engage and connect with their customers.”
He said the biggest use cases he sees for the IoT cloud are retail marketing programs that use beacons, as well as proactive customer service (like the thermostat example). In-store or event-based beacon messaging is being trialed by a number of major brands and retailers in Canada, such as Hudson’s Bay and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
IoT Cloud will launch early next year in beta, followed by a general release in the fall.
Many of Salesforce’s competitors have also recently announced IoT applications. The Adobe Summit in March had a big focus on new IoT features within its Marketing Cloud, including an extension to Experience Manager for creating and launching beacon campaigns. IBM says it’s spending $3 billion over the next four years to develop its cloud-based IoT services.
Overhauled UI and new SMB platform
Salesforce also announced today that it has fully integrated smart orchestration tech from RelateIQ, which it acquired last year, and has launched a new platform SalesforceIQ which will eventually replace the products it has in-market for small and midsize business clients.
RelateIQ’s tech promises to help marketers and sales reps better manage their time by intelligently suggesting sales opportunities and high-priority tasks. The responsive cross-device app ties together the user’s email inbox, contact details from their CRM database and calendar, plus alerts triggered when prospects take key actions.
Steve Loughlin, formerly RelateIQ’s CEO and now leading the SalesforceIQ team, said the small business version of the product is the first full CRM suite the company has offered to small- and medium-sized clients.
Salesforce also used Dreamforce to show off its redesigned user interface, Lightning, announced in August. Lightning takes its queues from customizeable UIs like Google Analytics, making the familiar functions of the Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud platforms more modular so clients can mix and match what they need. It also makes search a more central part of the UI, where users can navigate to applications, review contact details or jump to their notes on a deal in progress.
Salesforce has also added a new design editor so third-party partners can more easily create Lightning components users can add to their dashboard.
Dreamforce runs Tuesday to Friday this week in San Francisco, with 160,000 registered to attend. Keynotes today and tomorrow will include Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Jessica Alba, YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
