Dreamforce will feature sessions with Salesforce customers, including payroll firm ADP, discussing how they've used the Salesforce platform. Among the star clients Salesforce customers can look to is Veeva SystemsVEEV -0.67%, a maker of tech tools for the pharmaceutical industry. Veeva went public last month, and it has seen its stock price nearly double from its IPO price, taking the company's market value to about $5 billion.So far, the platform business is a small part of Salesforce's more than $3 billion in annual revenue, and the platform push means Salesforce is competing in the same field as tech giants such as MicrosoftMSFT -0.47% and Amazon.comAMZN +0.48%.But Salesforce executives say the new focus gives the company more ways to make money.
In addition to collecting licensing fees from its own services, like the flagship customer-relationship management software, Salesforce gets paid for each person at a company who builds software on the Salesforce platform. Salesforce also is hoping to attract more companies such as Veeva, which pays Salesforce a fee for each customer Veeva adds.Like most San Francisco tech-trade shows,Shaw uses Kobe as coaching tool
the business discussions and networking at Dreamforce are leavened with entertainment. Green Day and Blondie headline a concert Tuesday night at AT&T Park, home of baseball's San Francisco Giants. A dinner with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Wednesday includes Jerry Seinfeld and Tony Bennett.
Monday will be a warmup day for Dreamforce. The big events are Benioff's appearance with Drew Houston, the CEO of file-sharing service Dropbox, and a speech by Vivek Kundra, the former White House chief information officer and current Salesforce executive.Benioff will give a keynote speech Tuesday at 9 am Pacific Time. Other bold-faced names on the agenda are Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who is speaking Tuesday, and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, slated for Wednesday afternoon.As carbon emissions build and environmentalists grow more certain of the consequences, scientists have been searching for more precise ways to track the state of Earth's vast expanses of forest.