Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff remarked, “Windows 8 is the end of Windows,” at Cloudforce in New York, New York. Benioff expressed personal sentiment about the soon-to-arrive software release from company Microsoft, adding that “Windows is irrelevant.”
Benioff answered questions in a Q&A during a press conference at Cloudforce on October 19, 2012, relating his responses to promote his company Salesforce and its cloud-computing services. Analysts, media, and reporters were in attendance hearing the announcement of 20 social-media analytics services that are now included in Salesforce’s “Marketing Cloud.”
The premise of Salesforce’s cloud for marketing is to leverage social-media channels for businesses to help them expand their market-to-consumer reach within their niche.
Salesforce is a cloud-computing company engaged in providing mediums for consumers to enhance how they communicate in social marketing and social media. The social engagement mindset behind Salesforce includes gauging information from social networks that may share insights about the conversations that connect consumers to brand entities. Salesforce presents social enterprise to consumers allowing them to “deliver unique experiences and products that delight … customers, prospects and partners.”
“For the first time, marketers can manage social listening, content, engagement, advertising, workflow, automation and measurement,” Salesforce relates, “all within one powerful suite.”
“The goal is to not just get behind the ‘what’ and ‘where,’ but get to the ‘who,’” Rob Begg, vice prexy of marketing for Marketing Cloud, has noted publicly. “You can use these new social-analytics providers to make sense of large data sets. It can provide intelligence, influence and intent.”
At Cloudforce in New York, Benioff stated that consumers were no longer engaging one another about PCs. Benioff expressed that people now share their thoughts about tablets and other devices, such as the Kindle Fire HD, and smartphones, naming Apple’s iPhone 5.
Benioff shared thoughts that Windows 8 was lesser in value with trends. He stated CIOs had shifted to Windows 7, due to having no other solutions, however, technological alternatives have expanded the computing device, mobile and reader device landscape.
A lead-thinker in cloud computing, cloud software and technology, Benioff added, “Windows 8 is the gambit — will [CIOs] upgrade, or will they do something else?”
“It’s the end of Windows. … Windows is irrelevant.”
While PCs and laptops may account for Windows-related sales, consumer valuation may prove the indicator of whether Windows 8′s software is capable of sustaining productivity with work stations.
Salesforce announced its social analytics enhancements on October 19, 2012. Its analytics set now includes services such as the popular Twitter social analytics tool, Klout, and more analytical tools, including Kred, Kanjoya and PeekAnalytics. Providing customizable analytics to companies, such as Hewlett Packard, Ford and the National Football League, Salesforce purports “social listening” is the new trend for professionals and for businesses to learn about the effectiveness of their marketing to their customer bases.
“Ford doesn’t have a standalone social media strategy — we have a business strategy supported by social media,” Scott Monty, global digital & multimedia communications manager at Ford, noted about Salesforce. “We need to scale social media across our employees, dealers and customers, and know exactly how it is driving our business. We also need a unified view of social, to make analysis that comes out of it available to product development, advertising or product marketing. This is all possible with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.”
Implementing Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud may prove to be a high-end task for some proprietaries. The expense to run a basic platform begins at $5,000 monthly (plus a set of Salesforce “1,000 partner credits”). Additional credits, in increments of 10,000, run $100.
Learn more about Salesforce, social enterprise and cloud computing with Marketing Cloud.