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.
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