Constellation Analysts Provide Perspectives on Salesforce1 from CRM, PaaS, and Social Angles
At Dreamforce 2013 in November, Salesforce.com introduced Salesforce1, a new development platform for the next generation of Salesforce.com applications. Whether by coincidence or by design, Salesforce.com kept many questions open and the overall positioning of Salesforce1 uncertain, giving analysts and press ample room to speculate and even question Salesforce.com’s true intentions. As a result, the analyst community has been deeply divided about what Salesforce1 really means to the industry.
In this report, three Constellation analysts who attended Dreamforce and have had numerous conversations with Salesforce.com employees, partners and customers, try to shed some specific light on Salesforce1 and what it will do for customers and business partners.
The report starts by outlining some of the challenges that Salesforce.com has with its existing platforms Force.com and Heroku. Next, it provides an explanation of the new Salesforce1 platform and its role in Platform as a Service (PaaS), including how social features are being deployed natively across all of Salesforce.com services (such as CRM, Marketing, Support). Then it discusses how Salesforce1 is representative of a new class of enterprise software that has the promise of disrupting how systems integration is done. Finally, the report offers specific explanations and advice for five separate CxO roles.
Finally a key capability of Salesorce1 is also the identity aspect, which we covered in a separate Quark “Salesforce.com Introduces Identity Connect”.
This report provides a holistic view of the recent launch of Salesforce1 from Salesforce.com. Constellation looks at the new technology from the point of view of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and social communications.
