Salesforce - Marc Benioff keynote

alexbarnett — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:43:00 GMT

I'm here at the Salesforce Dev Conference in Santa Clara this morning and listening to Marc Benioff keynote who started his session 30 mins ago.

First he opened up with acknowledgement that there is a the Google / Salesforce rumour flying around this morning but explained that he wouldn't comment on it today - not confirming nor denying...So no 'official' news there.

I'm interested to hear how he explains the Salesforce SOA announcement this morning. Will post thoughts here later...

Update - 11:00 PDT

Adobe's Kevin Lynch is showing off an Apollo app running on a Mac, one as local front-end UI to Salesforce.com API, another app as a UI to ebay webservices and using local Mac resouces as an occasionally connected app, built using Flex. Video, music, etc. Pretty slick. Seems more and more to me that Silverlight / Flash / Apollo are on for huge developer mindshare battles over the next few months/years.

Update - 11:20 PDT

blah, blah.

Update - 11:35 PDT

Salesforce SOA...here we go...

My understanding of what he just said ~~(I didn't catch his name)~~ Adam Gross (VP, Developer Marketing): So you will be able to connect external, 3rd party webservices (FedEx, Google, Oracle, Hoovers, etc) and wire these up on the Apex platform, coded in Apex code. This then creates a new Apex code layer...exposed as a new API you can program against. "SOA as a service".

The scenario they are showing: Salesforce app connects to an Oracle DB to query customer data and invoice details through a WS layer, then importing that data in the Salesforce DB. Then use this new customer record and use some of this customer record data to query against a Dunn and Bradstreet service and a Zip code service, which again it imports into the SF DB. Then Apex code is generated that can be executed on Apex platform. The wiring experience is not a dev UX environment, but an html form based with some Ajax interaction - more of a business user interface to wire stuff up. Nice.

Update - 11:53 PDT

Salesforce SOA expected to be ready for developer preview in August.

Benioff is back on stage. Is reminding everyone he started as a dev, talking about his ealry days in the games industry, telling some story about 2 dev machines as Macs - wired together by cables, one acting as a compiler, another acting as...oh whatever...the point is that is how he met Guy Kawaski...he's on next.

Update - 11:56 PDT

Guy Kawaski is on stage. In response to Benioff's story - "You are so full of crap, Marc".

Update - 12:40pm PDT

Guy Kawasaki's talk was advice to entrepreneurs. Entertaining. Partially random notes I took...

1. Make meaning
- Curve 1: Ice Harvesting
- Curve 2: Ice Factory
- Curve 3: Refrigerator
"measurements are only statistics, and statistics lie"

2. Rolle the DICEE
- Deep: Fanning (Reef) - sneaker soles that open bottles
Intelligent: BF-104 Flashlight (Panasonic) - batteries
Complete: Lexus - more than...
Elegant: Nano (Apple)
Emotive: Harley Davidson

3. Make Mantra (piss-take of mission statement creation excercise. Wendy's as example - "the mission of Wnedy is to deliver suprior quality products that blah, blah, blah"

Should be:

Wendys: Healthy fast food
FedEx Peace of mind
Nike: Authentic athletic perf
Target: Democratizes desgin

4. Get going
- Think different
- Polarize people (don't be afraid to)
- Find a few sole mates (Steve and Woz, Bill had Steve)

5. Define a business model
- Be very specific (your customer's money is actually your money, they are just temporarily holding for you)
- Keep it simple
- Ask women (men want to kill things, women do'nt have this flaw)

6 Niche thyself
2 axis:
X - Value to customer
Y - Ability to provide unique product service

Get it high, and to right. Smart Car, Trek Lime, LG Kimchi refrigerator
low, left - dotcom
high, left - stupid
low, right -

7. Follow the 10/20/30 rule
"drowning is a growth industry"
10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font

8. Hire infected people
- Ignore the irrelevant (I loved Macs)
- Hire better than youself (bozo explosion)
- Apply the shopping center test

9. Lower the barriers to adoption
- Let a hundred flowers blossom (postscript save Apple)
- Find the true infuencers (the air is thin at the top)
- Ebrace your evanglists

10. Don't let the bozos grind you down

Blog - http://blog.guykawasaki.com

Keynote over....

Alex Barnett blog : SOA, Adobe, webservices, Apollo, silverlight

Salesforce - Marc Benioff keynote