Only in the movies have we really seen software that looks like this.
It’s the final day of another Dreamforce and as is traditional, the final word of our dedicated coverage goes to the main man, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who is in typically understated mode as he contemplates the ‘year of the interface’ pivot that the company has introduced this week at its annual user gathering in San Francisco. He says:
There are certain moments in our industry where everything is changing, and this is that moment for enterprise. We saw it when we were doing IBM mainframes, and then we went into mini-computers, then all of a sudden we started to go into client-server computing. We saw it when we were moving from client-server computing, and then all of a sudden, we were doing cloud computing. Now we’re moving from cloud computing, and we’re moving into this new platform.
Benioff has a clear idea of what his – and Salesforce’s – role is here:
What I’m trying to do is what I’ve always done, which is actually provide a North Star for the whole industry. I’m trying to take the whole industry somewhere. We try to do that. Obviously, we want to do that with our philanthropic model, the 1/1/1 model. We’re trying to do that with our business model, but we are trying to do that with our technology model too – and now we’ve slightly pivoted our technology model.
Timing is everything
And this is the right time to make such radical changes, given that AI adoption is still at an early stage. Benioff explains:
For a lot of customers, if you kind of travel around, they’ll say they really haven’t had their enterprise AI transformation. I don’t think most companies feel that…when you go to work, you [don’t] feel like, ‘Oh yeah, AI has really changed everything in our company’ Maybe people are still having their ChatGPT moment at home or on their phones, but when they get to their office, are they feeling like, ‘Yeah, wow, everything is different in our company?’.
So the time is ripe to bring in something that looks like nothing seen before, he suggests:
We have never really seen software in the enterprise that has these characteristics, so this is definitely that moment. For these companies and customers who see this experience, they all realize this is now the North Star.
How that manifests itself to customers is:
You’re going to end up with an enterprise transformation, but the interface itself is so smart; it can do three critical things. One, it can help administer Salesforce. That’s extremely important because there are thousands of different characteristics of Salesforce. That’s why these administrators can get in there and they have to kind of work with it in the different, you know, administration centers. Two, it’s going to let them build these applications, and three, it’s going to then let them operate the applications.
At Dreamforce, Salesforce showed off three live interfaces for its offerings, but that’s only the start, says Benioff:
Wrong thinking
One thing that has come through the messaging all week here is a sense of Benioff’s frustration about lack of understanding of customers real-world agendas on the enterprise frontline, resulting in falsehoods being perpetuated by key influencers, most notably perhaps in the ‘SaaSpocalypse’ myth that has so agitated Wall Street and certain analyst commentators:
I think there’s a lot of people who live in ‘podcast world’ and don’t live with the customers. I think it’s a huge mistake. We are so addicted to social media collectively – we’re on X, we’re reading these things, we’re watching these podcasts. We don’t realize we’re all part of a huge psyop, and that mis-information is being shot at us constantly.
The only way to break all that down is to get the help of the customers. That is reality. When you’re with the CEO, the CIO, the CRO, the COO, or the Head of Sales, and you are actually talking about ‘What do you need to run your business, what do you need to buy from us, what is really important to you?’, that is reality, and these other things are not reality.
One good example is the seeming obsession with pitching the idea of a frontier model arms race for dominance, he suggests. This just doesn’t matter to customer buyers as much as it seems to matter to certain commentators:
I think we get brainwashed by these podcasts, thinking that this is like the most important thing – ‘Well, this model now has this characteristic, and that model has that characteristic’. That’s not where customers’ minds are at.
Customers are not shopping around for models, he posits:
You know, what customers say is that they have three platforms that they run their business on – back office SAP, front office Salesforce, and a productivity suite, Microsoft. For the vast majority of customers that I meet with, that is their core architecture…So customers’ minds are, they’re operating their businesses, and they’re using our technology to run their Sales, their Marketing, their Service, close their books, and provide capability to their employees.
That idea that customers are shopping around for different model vendors, that is not where their consciousness is. I think that the vast majority of customers will purchase their AI through packaged software. That’s where the value will get provided, through packaged software like ours, not in some bespoke [model]. They don’t have the expertise or capability to do that. That’s that is not where customers’ heads are at.
Being number one – and staying there
In my preview of this week’s Dreamforce, I raised a hope that while the firm would clearly be pushing its forward-thinking agentic AI direction, that it would not lose sight of the ‘bread and butter’ of the likes of Sales, Service, Marketing et al, the core Salesforce business that the overwhelming majority of those attending the conference deal with every day of the week.
So it was interesting to hear Benioff make a firm declaration of intent about not losing sight of Salesforce’s raison d’etre:
You have to realize, number one, the most important thing for our company is we must be the number one CRM. Nothing is more important than that. We have a tremendous position with our customers…we must maintain that position no matter what.
And then, number two, if we get there ahead of all the other companies, and we can show that through the flexibility and nimbleness of our platform that we can deliver this total enterprise transformation for you, we will do it. But there has to be a prioritization. You see, in software, if everything is important, nothing is important. You have to choose. You have to decide what you really want. And I really believe the revenue opportunity for us, the value opportunity, the differentiation opportunity, and the ability to continue to lead our customers, is first and foremost with that CRM opportunity and that we have to continue to control that.
He cites German manufacturing behemoth Siemens as a case in point:
Here’s one of the very largest companies in the world, certainly in Europe, and they’ve been standardized on Salesforce. We must be their CRM standard. That cannot be a discussion.
But do you think that there aren’t other companies who would like to have that position? There are. Is it a constant discussion with them? Of course. We’re in a highly competitive market, so we have to, number one, make sure that we secure that position.
Then, once we’ve secured that position, can we move on and then offer that capability to others? Absolutely. Do we have that ability? We do. You can see it in the way we’ve architected our own systems. We’re our own enterprise AI standard, right?
My take
A very busy week at Salesforce and a pivotal week for the wider societal and industry debate around AI ethics and safety – and the two just collided at Dreamforce. Talk about serendipity! Benioff couldn’t have hoped for better and he’s made the most of the opportunity.
Whether the bold declarations he’s made all week about delivering another tectonic shift in the enterprise are all realized – and how quickly – remains to be seen, but the Ohana surely leaves Dreamforce today conscious that they have been witness to something genuinely transformative. If anyone doesn’t, then it’s not for want of trying by Benioff and his team.
Certainly I head home with a better understanding of the tectonic shift that’s being pitched here.On Tuesday I compared the AIforce announcement to a chocolate chip cookie that hadn’t quite baked through in terms of messaging. Three days later and I can see it looks like a tasty morsel.
So that’s another Dreamforce over for another year. Such is the pace of development at present that who knows what will happen in the tech sector before the Ohana gathers again, same time, same place next year? Until then, diginomica will continue to track, report and analyze progress.
But for now, this has been Dreamforce 2026.
And that’s a wrap!
