The App Cloud is about customer success. Today’s Dreamforce session started by introducing Bosma Enterprises, a non-profit for the blind and visually impaired. They are end-to-end Salesforce, and it’s all accessible to the visually impaired.

The next project is to bring a telecom platform that can be maintained by the blind and visually impaired.

Visit bosma.org to support them.

The session began with a video highlighting the Salesforce App cloud as a great PaaS place to build apps with a variety of value add services. App Cloud is also integrated with all of Salesforce’s other cloud platforms.

Todd Nielsen kicked it off after the intro and video.

Stats:

• 4.5 million applications
• 2,3M developers
• 3.7 billion transactions
• 2.8M exchange apps
• 100,000 Trailhead apps

Quote: We are in the app economy now.

Speed is the new currency. You either keep up or be disrupted. Customer connection and expectations continue to evolve. Users will expect you to know them and engage with them in new ways.

Pac 12 has a vision for the connected fan experience. They want to give you the right parking spot, give you stats on favorite players, and if you are alumni, tie you in.  I want every fan to feel like this game is for them.”

But the silos represent a challenge.  The silos are obstacles to building this experience. It’s about:

1. Single view of the customer
2. Engaging user experience
3. Connected things

This new platform can’t just be packaging or a bunch of bits in a box. The platform has to be connected. It has to connect identity, data, etc.

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The App cloud is all the assets brought together:

• Force
• Heroku
• Lighting
• Thunder (IoT Cloud)
• AppExchange
• Trailhead
• Shared identity model

The App cloud focuses on letting you using a trusted and connected platform to give you speed and agility.

Connected Experience

How do you turn billions of events into a connected experience?

Half the problem is that most businesses don’t know how to act on all the information they are gathering. Mckinsey said that only 1% of the data from Oil and Gas is being used for any purpose.

Announcement: IoT Cloud powered by Thunder

The IoT cloud will allow you to:

1. Capture massive amounts of data
2. Execute actions with intelligence (think massive pattern and rules engine)
3. Create 1-1 engagement by sending off that key event or threshold to your marketing, sales, or service engine

Who can do this? It’s not just the uber geeks who can do this.

Dylan Steele to demo IoT Cloud

Taking in data from gaming consoles, thermostats, and a variety of sensors.

• Brought out “Hugh” to play a fitness game on his console
• Data brought to the cloud and capturing events for Hugh and his friends
  • Also taking data fitness band, ecommerce site, and social network
• “Orchestrations” are fules
  • Health of console
  • onboarding of new customer
  • gamer re-engagement
• Created three states
  • avid player
  • Lapsed player
  • Churn player (dropped it)
• Created rules for each state
  • friends online – your friend is online go play
  • Service cloud – It’s broken, come fix it
• Walked through how to create a new rule
  • Start with output – to Marketing Cloud for example
    • Or straight to the game console.  On event, send them an upgrade to the game
• Hugh gets a message that his friend Nichole is playing
  • With a message welcoming him back and giving him a new level

Trusted Platform

Salesforce is their number one value. They take it seriously. This summer they introduced Salesforce Shield that allows you to encrypt, monitor, and audit everything in your Salesforce cloud. It’s native to Saleforce and can easily be setup to your Apps.

Administration is easy to configure.

Five years ago, Salesforce bought Heroku. Last year announced Heroku connect to bring it closer to the Salesforce platform. This allows you to sync Salesforce data to a Heroku DB.  But the next step is Heroku Enterprise. This gives you:

1. Private space- your own private cloud even though it’s on the Heroku cloud.  You can build apps in your trusted network boundaries.  It changes the meaning of hybrid.  This allows you to trust it but still focus on your business and apps.  All the running of this Heroku / AWS will keep it running and scaling.
2. Selectable Regions: Let me decide where to run an app.  Oregon, VA, CA, Tokoyo, Ireland, etc.
3. Integrated Identity: One sign-on across Force, Heroku, etc.

Speed and Agility

Why constrain yourself to just a few programmers building the app?

Real-Life Customer

Crossmark

They bring together brands and consumers. They are about creating connections. They help consumer goods companies connect with consumers.  Salesforce has become the integration and application platform for them.  The speed and agility they gain from the app cloud has changed things.

Salesforce has helped Crossmark to take manual processes and move it to an automated workflow. They are on mobile apps and allow them to collect it real time.

They can prototype quickly and use an agile development framework.  Business and IT are closer

Margaret Francis to show more

• Showed their CIO dashboard
• want to build an app for Crossmark tasting specialists
  • Jennifer has to do a tasting for Chobani
  • She has a tablet and a pencil/paper
  • She needs an app
• Launched the Lightning app builder
  • Choose phone as the size
  • dragged standard components or some custom components built by Crossmark developers
• Saved and Activated it so it would be available to Jennifer and other Tasting Specialists
• All of these things are built on the same objects as everything else
  • So you can build a workflow in process builder
  • Showed a real time usage of gathering and aggregating the info
• Heroku lets you build apps that let you personalize it all
  • mobile app to do in store recommedations and offer
  • supports ibeacons as well
• How they did it?
  • Showed the rewards app and stats
  • Showed the services being used
  • Easy to scale to bring up more servers
• Feedback: we love Heroku.  But how do we get it with all the security of our data center
  • Enter Private Spaces. It’s your own Heroku version in your own trusted space
  • Created a new space real time
  • Takes about 8 minutes
  • Can move the japanese version of the app to Tokyo

Trailhead

It’s a free online, interactive training for everyone. Unlock the power of the Salesforce App Cloud. It brings developer, IT, and the business together

USAA

They built over 200 apps with 75% delivered by citizen developers. Harry Stallings, AVP of App Development had a story.

• IT organization had a number of customer building small apps which were worrying from a security perspective
• Started a program on Force.com and allowed users to create apps
  • Started Force.com days
  • Trained citizen developers
  • Strengthened the relationship with the business
• Made sure there was  governance process
  • actually built a Force app to ensure the applications were following the process
• The next big app?
  • We continue to nurture app development
  • Just about ready to enable chatter throughout their app cloud
  • Looking to get IT developers to use Force

Wrap-up

Everyone should go take a look at Trailhead. Get a starter kit.