Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff: The future of computing looks like Twitter

June 25, 2009 | Anthony Ha
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marcbenioffMarc Benioff, co-founder and chief executive of Salesforce.com, told attendees at today’s Structure 09 conference in San Francisco that the world of business software and infrastructure is starting to see the same craze for real-time results that’s taking over web search. And he extolled the virtues of the pioneer of the real-time web — microblogging service Twitter.

Customers of Salesforce’s sales and and customer service web applications, as well as its Force.com platform for business applications, expect everything to happen right away, Benioff said — if they update their data, they expect those changes to appear immediately, not an hour or two in the future.

“Any concept of batch or delay in development or execution, I think, will not be tolerated by customers anymore,” Benioff said. “Even in development, customers are demanding now that they want to be able to build in that sandbox and deploy immediately, instantly, no delay.”

Many companies haven’t realized this is where things are headed, he said. Benioff recounted attending meetings with chief information officers who all refused to believe that Twitter represents anything significant; they don’t have accounts themselves because “it’s not their generation.” Benioff’s response? He types the name of their company into Twitter search and shows that they’re missing out on a huge part of the conversation. (Benioff isn’t an impartial observer here, since Salesforce’s Service Cloud product is all about connecting companies to their customers on services like Twitter.)

“I think corporations have to step it up in terms of integrating with these real-time systems,” he said.

That’s the same lesson that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has learned recently as Twitter is used to organize anti-government protesters, Benioff added: “He’s probably on Twitter right now.”

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and enterprise technology. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Here, I want to say: you are successful, I hope you will do better!
  • Charlie630
    There are many differing opinions on this, I just can't see twitter lasting in the next 5 years. Right now it's a big deal but should big companies jump on the bandwagon? Is Salesforce just jumping on the latest bandwagon and how long will the ride last???
  • What a revelation. People want things faster today than they did yesterday and this trend is set to continue...

    "if they update their data, they expect those changes to appear immediately"

    Yeah so would any moron, if Salesforce can't manage (near) real-time updates then any business using it is suffering. This desire isn't driven by Twitter!

    Smells like garnering for attention by mentioning the latest buzzword.

  • Ok, set DATA_REFRESH to 10 seconds instead of 4 hours and put in 20 new HP servers to cope with the spiked load. What's the problem? Don't want the new servers 'cos it's way beyond your means? Well, "you just don't get it".
  • Twitter is Simple,Short,Quick ,In-Time and crowd-powered,
    From social media to business, If you are running out of ideas on How to use twitter for business? then you are running out of business ideas.

  • Is SalesForce integration platform AppGate real-time?
    Probably not.
  • Not having to wait doesn’t mean necessarily “real-time”. It only suggests that the information arrives “in-time” – in the moment the person needs it. Why is this important? Because there is a related cost inherent to the process response time. And there is a related value inherent to every piece of information which is at the right time where people need it. A cost sensitive IT approach should reflect this. http://blog.uc4.com/2009/05/20/how-david-beats-goliath/
  • I'm not following the distinction here.
  • I guess UC4 wanted to say the same as I did - it is quite easy to refresh the database connections automatically as often as desired (10 sec or less is pretty much the same as real time), however the load on infrastructure (servers, routers etc) will increase dramatically, forcing the enterprise to do costly upgrades. Of course, vendors and IT service providers will be happy to assist in it but cost-aware CIOs should ask themselves whether they should encourage users to manually refresh the information only when they really need it.
  • Geoff H
    Good, fast, cheap is a nice way to put a common trade off, but it is not a fact, it's a meme.

    The work that is done up-front and sold doesnt have be be crappy, slow and expensive (pick one), it depends on the quality of the work, the way its organized and used for performance, and the scale of sales (lots of sales for less, few sales for more).

    Things will be changing in the next decade. Twitter is very thin, and works great for what it does (not including when it doesnt), but enterprise applications will be changing as well.
  • The apotheosis of the "I want it now" generation?

    As engineers used to say , "I can give you it quick, good , cheap. Pick any two"

    Best

    R
  • hamagudi
    Difficult to say, if real-time is the way to go. Real-time is definitely the current craze, but we need to ask the question, will it last? It might be some sort of a bubble about to burst. I am not saying that it is absolutely useless - there are values in real-time data, but there might be a lack of depth. And there are people and corporation which survive on in-depth analyzed data. Then again probably will soon be automatic tools available to generate the in-depth analysis and summary of this data in real time, which has the potential of changing the web landscape again.
  • Absolutely! The web is increasingly becoming a real-time stream of activities, which include how the real-time engagement with your customers and clients are going *right now*. Product managers should increasingly adopt social tools to track perceptions by users and star conversations. Brands will slowly becoming stream channels and if your brand has no engaged followers, you lose the touch with your tribe.
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