The data explosion will change everything; analytics is for all, and mobile first is the access principle, says Salesforce VP at software summit 
Melissa Di Donato, head of European Channels & ISV Programs at Salesforce.com says that a connected environment would mean connected sales teams, digital sales aids and an integrated customer platform as part of the broader pattern. “The world has gone social with 2.3 billion social users, but companies are building their own social networks in the form of communities,” and channels would need to adapt to this.
“Cloud offers us not just a different way of using technology, but a new way for customers to buy, customers look to us to offer a new way to buy. Internet of Things is a way of communicating and connecting; we are now in the era of billions of connected devices,” she said at the European Software and Solutions Summit on March 25 in London.
“Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave us this quote not so long ago: 'The Internet of Things is ground zero for this new phase of global transformation, powered by technology innovation.' What this is going to do is generate significant change, economically to our society, and both the way we deliver and buy solutions.”
There is a lot going in in big data: 90% of the world's data was created in the last two years, she says. By 2020 there will be ten times the current amount of mobile data, much of it unstructured. This needs to be found and used in business decisions.
Salesforce has recently added the analytics cloud to its portfolio, and the main premise of what it is trying to deliver to partner and customers is to make it available to everyone, so that anyone can use it. "Secondly, it has to be mobile first; you can run your business from your phone, it is an imperative, in fact. Analytics should be able to use the same power– just because it is big doesn't mean it can't carry it around on a mobile device. Finally it needs to be open, for every device and platform to access and find value in it,” she concluded.