By Rachael King 

Salesforce.com Inc.'s annual Dreamforce customer conference, set to blanket downtown San Francisco next week, will be an unusual blend of business, technology, entertainment, philanthropy and personal empowerment.

The conference, which is the world's largest tech get-together sponsored by a single company, will be an expression of the business-software provider's socially conscious corporate culture and the idiosyncratic character of its Chief Executive Marc Benioff.

The event, which is expected to draw 170,000 attendees -- 17% more than last year -- comes as Salesforce, whose public profile to date has been confined largely to salespeople and marketers, is stepping onto a larger stage.

The company on Thursday vowed to block Microsoft Corp.'s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. , after failing in its own effort to buy the online network of 450 million mostly professional members. Meanwhile, Salesforce is considering a bid for the consumer-focused messaging service Twitter.

The conference may reveal more about these plans when investors get a chance to question executives on October 4.

Dreamforce will feature the usual technology demonstrations and customer testimonials. And as with other big-tech shindigs, there will be a concert at which the iconic rock group U2 will perform.

But this conference, reflecting the CEO's aspirations beyond business, will include days programmed to focus on social values such as compassion. For example, more than 20 Buddhist monastics from Plum Village, a meditation center in southern France founded by Vietnamese Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh, will lead daily sessions on walking meditation and mindful eating.

Mr. Benioff, 52, founded the company in 1999 to capitalize on the then-new concept of selling software as a service over the internet. Now he is an increasingly vocal advocate for social causes, such as racial equality in the tech sector, children's health care, equal pay for men and women, as well as gay and transgender rights.

He spent last spring battling North Carolina's so-called bathroom bill, which aimed to prevent transgender individuals from using public restrooms that don't match the individual's biological gender. A U.S. District Court recently barred enforcement of the law.

Accordingly, Dreamforce will outfit San Francisco's Moscone Center convention hall with gender-neutral restrooms. Attendees will receive stickers they can wear to designate their preferred pronouns, not only "he/him" and "she/her," but also the gender-neutral "they/them" for those who prefer not being designated male or female.

Mr. Benioff takes the idea of social corporate responsibility to an extent not usually seen in many companies, especially outside San Francisco, where Salesforce.com is headquartered. Yet, he is adamant the company's customers and employees favor this type of corporate social leadership, a theme that will resonate through this year's conference.

"The next generation of CEOs must advocate for all stakeholders -- employees, customers, community, the environment, everybody...not just shareholders," Mr. Benioff told The Wall Street Journal in May.

Mr. Benioff's preparation for the conference reflected his savvy as a marketer. He and his executives convened numerous of meetings and focus groups across the country to test their messages for Dreamforce and their delivery, said Simon Mulcahy, interim chief marketing officer at Salesforce.com.

Those pre-conference preparations also helped the company decide how to talk about Einstein, which is an initiative to imbue Salesforce.com's software with artificial intelligence to automate tasks, predict behavior and spotlight relevant information.

Software with humanlike abilities to recognize patterns, make decisions and learn from experience is a goal of companies, including Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., all of which have been investing heavily in the technology.

Industry watchers expect AI to drive a substantial market in software in the next few years. International Data Corp. predicts the world-wide market for cognitive software platforms and applications, which roughly defines the market for AI, to increase to $16.6 billion in 2019 from $1.6 billion in 2015, a compound annual growth rate of 65.2%.

Salesforce executives say Einstein will be the most important development at Dreamforce, and they are betting they can use it to grab a piece of that growth.

The company is closing in on its longstanding goal of $10 billion in annual revenue, and Mr. Benioff has vowed to double that figure in coming years. To that end, he has spent about $700 million in recent years to buy companies specializing in machine learning and other AI techniques.

At the Dreamforce conference, he will pull back the covers and reveal the fruits of that investment. While he expects the software to supply the intelligence, the humans, at least, should be mindful.

Write to Rachael King at rachael.king@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 01, 2016 07:14 ET (11:14 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
過去 株価チャート
から 2 2024 まで 3 2024 Microsoftのチャートをもっと見るにはこちらをクリック
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
過去 株価チャート
から 3 2023 まで 3 2024 Microsoftのチャートをもっと見るにはこちらをクリック