Home Live Blog: Marc Benioff’s Dreamforce Keynote – Day 2

Live Blog: Marc Benioff’s Dreamforce Keynote – Day 2

It is the second day of Dreamforce, the annual conference for Salesforce.com users.

Today the news is all about Heroku, which has been acquired by Salesforce.com for $212 million.

We’ll see what else is on tap as Marc Benioff takes the stage.

9:10 Killing time. We’re starting a bit late. Pete Coffee of Salesforce.com is talking with a George Bush impersonator.

9:17 Looks like we are about to get started.

9:21 Sounds like a new song – “This is the best one yet.” Video montage from yesterday’s Dreamforce.

9:22 Benioff is back on stage. He said it was a late night. What time is it? Stevie Wonder and Will.i.am talked backstage last night. Benioff says it was a like father and son conversation. Just like conversations he used to have with Larry Ellison, Benioff said.

9:25 Benioff is comparing Microsoft to a dark force. He is talking about how Microsoft sued Salesforce.com. He is talking about the protests Microsoft did at Dreamforce yesterday. The campaign: “I Didn’t Get Forced,” received a lot of criticism. He is asking the audience to help get the customers back.

9:30 Star Wars “Empire Strikes Back,” music is playing as “Bernard” takes the stage. The actor looks the person from a the Microsoft ad. Benioff is now talking with Bernard about the pains of working with Microsoft. Bernard agrees to go back to Salesforce.com.

9:35 Benioff is talking about University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and its mission to advance health worldwide. Benioff is explaining why he and his wife gave $100 million to UCSF for a children’s hospital.

9:44 Benioff is talking about new headquarters the company is building at UCSF. Tonight is the benefit concert for the children’s hospital, featuring Neil Young. Anyone have a ticket for a cloud blogger? Really, it’s an excellent cause. Tickets are still available.

9:55 Benioff is showing Cloud 2 with such new offerings as Database.com. He is explaining Database.com and its significance. VMforce helped Salesforce.com offer Java apps. Benioff says the company has been a bit myopic. The company has not been listening to customers, who have been saying Salesforce.com is too proprietary. They asked themselves what they needed to add. They decided they needed to add Ruby-on-Rails. The console for Database.com was built on Ruby. More than 1 million developers use Ruby. Developers love Ruby. Groupon is built on Ruby. Parker Harris, co-founder, now knows Ruby.

10:00 Benioff is telling the story about how he met the Heroku team and how far ahead they are on the Ruby platform. Heroku is the number one platform for Ruby. Heroku has had explosive growth. It has 105,000 apps. It gets 200 million Web requests a day. There are 3,000 new apps per week.

10:03 Benioff calls Heroku its seventh cloud.He has just introduced Byron Sebastien, Heroku’s CEO. Benioff is asking how it happened. Sebastien is talking about the team that founded the company in 2007. The cloud changes the operation model. It changes the development process from the ground up. Heroku is designed for developers. It gives them what they want in a way that is optimized for the cloud.

Platform is full speed ahead, Sebastien said. It will continue to accelerate. This has to be said to quell the concerns of developers using the Heroku platform. Heroku woks with multiple databases. It helps brand managers manage analytics and visualize the data.

10:15 BMC Software is taking the stage. BMC announced RemedyForce today. It’s an app for IT services management. BMC Chairman Bob Beauchamp is on stage. IT Service management is a $15 billion market. The idea is to integrate Salesforce Chatter and other services. IT configuration management is like a holy grail, Benioff said. Beauchamp said that will now be available on Force.com. Reports can be brought back natively to mobile apps. Knowledge can be provided to third parties. Lots more with this and it positions Salesforce.com to compete with the larger IT Services companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and IBM.

10:26 Salesforce.com executive on stage talking how IT has fallen behind. But they re not to blame. The evil forces are the traditional software companies. Force.com 2 is referenced as the symbol for the new Internet and the idea of platform as a service. Froce.com 2 has uses for collaborative apps; Web sites; enterprise Java apps; consumer facing apps and packaged apps. Appforce, Sitefore, VMforce, Heroku and the new ISVforce make up Force.com 2.

10:32 Appforce closes the gap. It includes criteria based sharing; bulk API query and retrieve; configurable Visualforce pages and other features. Siteforce allows for building and updating Web sites on the Force.com platform. This is a clear competitor to content management systems. Demonstration is showing how a Web site is built. Asset management, editing, Twitter updates and other elements are added through drag and drop. Web site updates to the mobile device.

10:40 VMforce allows enterprise developers to build Java apps. Accenture’s CTO Paul Daugherty is on stage. For Accenture, VMforce allows its Java community to build apps. He is now showing an app for trade show promotion management. App is written in Java on VMforce. He said they could not have done this without Database.com. Showing how Salesforce Chatter lets trade promotions people. They can see the new promotions and data from a number of third party sources with data analytics.

10:47 ISVforce allows multi-tenant capabilities. Kind of rushed demo. Keynote is coming to a close. Attendees are being asked to come on stage to talk about how they are using Force.com.

10:51 Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen is showing the app built on the platform for its e-learning and training capabilities. Deanna Johnston, CIO at Belkin, said the company built apps for bid management. pricing and rebates and samples management. Joue Drouoin, CIO of Kelly Services developed a supplier portal. Peter Winters, CIO, Avon, said the comlany built a productivity management app for sales people in the field. Mark White, CTO of Deloitte is building apps for recruiting, life insurance, trade promotions and innovation.

11:00 a.m. That’s it!

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