Dreamforce Kicks Off Today — Announces Internet Of Things and SalesforceIQ

That’s right, today is the day that Dreamforce by Salesforce kicks off, and plenty of businesses who are hoping to gain some sales insights are attending. For anyone who may have attended Inbound 15 last week and thought that it was extravagant, well, Dreamforce is certainly stepping up the game. Some guest performers who will be seen at this year’s Dreamforce conference include the Foo Fighters, The Killers, and Gary Clark Jr. Some well-known keynote headliners include Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, Jessica Alba, Goldie Hawn, Patricia Arquette, and Sophia Amurosa (who also appeared at the Inbound 15 conference).

As Dreamforce kicked off, Salesforce just announced SalesforceIQ and the IoT Cloud. SalesforceIQ is a new tool for small business owners that makes sales and marketing automation a lot easier. The way it works, describes Jordan Novet of VentureBeat, is as follows.

“The new products automate the process of getting data to the right places, so sales reps can focus on doing more important work. SalesforceIQ for Small Business passively pushes information from calendars, emails, calls, and marketing automation software (HubSpot, MailChimp, and Salesforce’s Pardot are being supported initially) into the CRM.”

What this means is that by using this new tool by Salesforce, salespeople don’t need to jump back and forth between different CRM platforms to monitor marketing efforts, emails, or relationship intelligence softwares. The IoT Cloud that was also announced by Salesforce at Dreamforce, stands for the “Internet of Things,” and is a system that helps to monitor billions of events relayed daily by mobile devices, stated MarketWatch. Adam Bosworth, a software expert who lead the Salesforce project, says the goal is to do the following.

“… orchestrate interactions between devices equipped with sensors, letting customers set rules to trigger actions for a variety of purposes.”

Announcing these two new tools at Dreamforce means that Salesforce was able to directly reach over 100,000 attendees who will get a first-hand understanding and introduction to the platforms. And generally, when you announce a new product to a group of salespeople and marketers, chances are you are going to get a lot of free publicity. Also, because the tool is geared towards small business owners who generally can’t afford the enterprise costs of Salesforce (or the costs to attend Dreamforce), the company now has a better chance of widely expanding their reach. It is available for only $25 a month to startups and SMEs, says Forbes.

Another thing to look forward to with this year’s Dreamforce is that the conference is being live streamed from the Salesforce website. So, for anyone who missed the opportunity to attend Salesforce’s Dreamforce, well, now you can tune into all of the keynote speeches from the comfort of your home or office. Dreamforce is currently taking place in San Francisco and will wrap up on September 18.

[Image from Salesforce.com]