Marc Benioff, the CEO and founder of Salesforce.com has reasons to be fired up.
As he took the stage as the opening speaker of Dreamforce 2012, shares of Salesforce rose $1.09 to $157.38, up 61% since the start of the year.
Benioff led his talk by stating that Salesforces.com forecasts $3 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2013 year. Not bad for a company that started in a San Francisco living room.
Predictably, Benioff emphasized the impact of social media on business and quoted an IDC report which states "70% of all business are now using social media. Business is now social. 47% IDC higher growth investment of that day in the IT industry. It's a customer revolution."
But today's big new product announcement is Salesforce Chatterbox. Salesforce calls it the “Dropbox for the Enterprise. Chatterbox according to a press release "will deliver simple and secure file sharing across devices in the enterprise. With Salesforce Chatterbox, users will be able to manage and share files in the context of business."
Other new products include Salesforce Marketing Cloud , a comprehensive suite for social marketing which "harnesses the power of industry leaders Radian6 and Buddy Media" and Salesforce Touch, powered by HTML5, and compatible with any mobile platforms and devices.
Think of the application as a Dropbox connected to a messaging service. "Chatter combines social networking features such as profiles, real-time feeds, trending topics, recommendations and influence measurement, with the business information and processes in Salesforce." Now, the challenge will be to get businesses to adopt it and change their established habits. As it worst, it will be another app to add to your toolbox, as its best, an integrated file sharing application running smoothly with your existing Salesforce arsenal.
The attendance to the Salesforce's extravaganza has double from last year to reach an impressive 92,000 participants.
This year's event includes as guests Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, Gen. Colin Powell, Tony Robbins, entrepreneur, author and peak performance strategist. And tonight's gala seems promising with the Red Hot Chili Peppers scheduled to perform at 8 pm at an outdoor concert at the Civic Center.
