Salesforce.com Launches Next Generation Sales Cloud

The annual Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference took over San Francisco this week, complete with big crowds, big keynotes, and several big cloud announcements.

Salesforce.com (CRM) announced the next-generation Salesforce Sales Cloud with new social and mobile innovations. Salesforce Touch was launched, a HTML5 mobile experience, and Chatter Communities for Partners, which will connect companies with distributors, resellers, suppliers and more to drive sales. The new Salesforce.com cloud platform, with over 2.5 million apps, will include a Salesforce Identity that will deliver “Facebook-like identity for the enterprise,” a single, social, trusted identity service to access and centrally manage every cloud app within Salesforce.

Also new on the Salesforce platform is a new Force.com Canvas will allow any app, in any language, to run inside of the Salesforce user interface with unified identity, secure access to records, and collaboration via the Chatter social graph. Legacy applications, such as SAP can be transformed into social front ends creating a seamless experience for users. A new native geo-location field enables developers to create locale-aware mobile apps on the world's leading cloud database. The plattform's data.com Social Key will unite the best context from social networks with the business framework of traditional data, enabling enterprises to build even stronger relationships with customers and close more deals, faster.

“Today’s leading companies recognize that business is social,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com. “With new innovations across our six product lines, companies can transform the way they sell, service, market, collaborate, work and innovate in order to connect more deeply with customers.”

HR Cloud and Enterprise File Sharing

Salesforce.com also launched Work.com,  a social performance management platform that revolutionizes the way companies align around social goals, motivate their people with real-time recognition and rewards and drive performance with continuous feedback and relevant performance reviews. Salesforce.com and Workday announced they are expanding their partnership to enable seamless integration between Workday HCM and Work.com.

“The way we work has changed, but the technology most companies use to manage work is painfully out of date,” said John Wookey, EVP of social applications, salesforce.com. “Work.com empowers teams to work better together by delivering the tools they need to stay aligned and motivated — and integrating them with the systems where people actually work.”

Also launched at Dreamforce was Salesforce Chatterbox - simple and secure file sharing across devices in the enterprise. With Chatterbox, users will be able to manage and share files in the context of business. Linked with its enterprise social network Salesforce Chatter, Chatterbox will enable employees to be able to share and manage their files in Chatter as easily as they share photos with their friends and family on Facebook.

“Our customers have been asking us to create a file sharing service like Dropbox for the enterprise,” said Nasi Jazayeri, EVP and GM of Salesforce Chatter, salesforce.com. “Now with Salesforce Chatterbox, employees will be able to securely access and share their files with the trust of Salesforce.”

Follow the Twitter conversation about Dreamforce 2012 at #DF12.