Salesforce has launched Einstein Voice Skills, a tool that will make it quick and easy for admins and developers to build customised voice-powered apps for anyone and everyone. 

Unveiled at the company’s annual Dreamforce show in San Francisco this week, the latest addition to the AI-based platform will equip individuals in any role or industry with a handy way to make customer relationship management (CRM) much more personalised. 

Einstein Voice Assistant was announced at last year’s Dreamforce event, so the arrival of Skills is building on that momentum, according to Ally Witherspoon, Senior director of product marketing, Einstein AI and analytics at Salesforce. 

“You probably remember our fantastic announcement around Einstein Voice Assistant last year. [Now] we’re extending Einstein Voice Assistant with the addition of Einstein Voice Skills,” she said. 

“You can build an application for your service agents, your sales manager, your retailers. Whatever their profile in Salesforce, they can have a custom app built for them.”

It can also be deployed in a matter of clicks to build custom apps for business processes, reducing the need for manual entry and, in turn, reducing the likelihood of introducing errors. 

In addition, Salesforce will offer a capability called Einstein Call Coaching. This is designed for managers so they can better analyse call activity and contents, spot trends and, ultimately, optimise the experience customers have by arming sales reps with key insights. 

By making use of natural language processing (NLP) to power voice analytics, the goal is to “drive smarter, more personalised customer engagement,” according to Salesforce. 

Salesforce sees business-focused voice analytics and enhanced capabilities as a natural extension of what people have already become used to in the consumer world through smart devices such as Alexa and digital assistants such as Siri. 

«Voice is a huge shift for the industry and will be as impactful in businesses as it’s been in our homes,» said Bret Taylor, Salesforce’s president and chief product officer.

«With Einstein, Salesforce is bringing the power of voice to every business, giving everyone an intelligent, trusted guide at work.»

Although most businesses have adopted a multi-cloud strategy, there are significant challenges in the way these are being implemented including security and lack of expertise.

The adoption of multi-cloud approaches are on the rise, with the majority of companies across the world, approximately two-thirds, having deployed enterprise applications on two or more public clouds, according to findings by the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network, in partnership with A10 Networks.

Meanwhile, 84% of companies expect to increase their reliance on public or private clouds over the next two years.

The growth in multi-cloud adoption, however, has led to a rise in significant challenges facing businesses. Ensuring security, for example, across all clouds, networks, applications and data is the biggest concern for businesses.

This crucial challenge is followed by the need to acquire the necessary skills and expertise, as well as dealing with increased complexity in managing cloud environments. There’s also a key challenge in achieving centralised visibility and management across cloud portfolios.

“Multi-cloud is the de facto new standard for today’s software- and data-driven enterprise,” said the head of thought leadership and research for the BPI Network, Dave Murray.

“However, our study makes clear that IT and business leaders are struggling with how to reassert the same levels of management, security, visibility and control that existed in past IT models.

“Particularly in security, our respondents are currently assessing and mapping the platforms, solutions and policies they will need to realise the benefits and reduce the risks associated of their multi-cloud environments.”

To highlight the scale of the challenge businesses face, just 11% of respondents suggested their companies have been ‘highly successful’ in realising the benefits of multi-cloud, despite a significant increase in adoption in recent years.

Businesses suggest they would prioritise centralised visibility and analytics, embedded into security and performance as a requirement for improving this, as well as automated tools to speed response times and reduce costs.

Other aspects needed include a centralised management portal from a single point of control and greater security scale and performance to handle increased traffic.

The individual tools businesses require included centralised authentication, centralised security policies, web application firewalls, and protection against DDoS attacks.

“The BPI Network survey underscores a critical desire and requirement for companies to reevaluate their security platforms and architectures in light of multi-cloud proliferation,” said vice president of worldwide marketing at A10 Networks, Gunter Reiss.

“The rise of 5G-enabled edge clouds is expected to be another driver for multi-cloud adoption. A10 believes enterprises must begin to deploy robust Polynimbus security and application delivery models that advance centralised visibility and management and deliver greater security automation across clouds, networks, applications and data.”

SAP, VMware and Microsoft Windows workloads can now be migrated to Google Cloud, the company announced at its Next 19 event in London.

The new capabilities will allow customers to migrate the workloads without having to change tools or use different functions – lifting them «as is» according to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

«Our mission at Google Cloud is to enable organisations around the world to transform their business using digital technology,» he said during his keynote. «And to do so offering the best infrastructure, a digital transformation platform and industry-specific solutions to help you transform your organisation.»

The first announcement was for Google customers running VMware workloads on-premise. Kurian said that Google Cloud now allows them to move their VMware workloads to the cloud, using existing VMware tools, processes and operational practices. He said it allows workload migration while maintaining business continuity.

This is possible through the company’s acquisition of CloudSimple, an enterprise migration platform and former partner that Google absorbed on Monday. The firm is recognised worldwide as an expert in running VMware and has proven technology to move VMware workloads to the Google Cloud, Kurian said.

His second announcement was for the ‘SAP Cloud Acceleration Programme’, another service to move workloads to Google’s Cloud – again, due to a number of its partners already running SAP applications in its cloud. Kurian said this was because it lets them upgrade SAP systems without downtime.

The third announcement was for Microsoft Windows, where NetApp storage will be used for broader support for both Windows desktop and server applications to be moved to Google Cloud. NetApp is a hybrid cloud data service and management company which is conveniently led by Thomas Kurian’s twin brother George.

There were also new security features, announced by Google Cloud’s VP of engineering, security and trust, Suzanne Frey. The first of which is an External Key Manager, due to launch soon. It allows customers to integrate their own third-party encryption keys with the Google Cloud key management service. Customers can keep their encryption keys completely outside of Google’s infrastructure, either on their own premises or in a third-party key management service.

To go with this, Frey also announced Key Access Justification, which works with the External Key Manager and provides a reason each time a key is accessed – forcing Google to request to decrypt customer data.

«Using these services together, you can deny us any access to your data,» Frey said. «And as a result, you are the ultimate arbiter of access to your information.»

Vodafone has partnered with Google Cloud to build a big data platform as part of its digital transformation programme.

This is a customised data analytics platform called ‘Vodafone Neuron’ that the telecoms giant said will act as a brain and driver for AI and business intelligence for its global business.

Vodafone has been migrating its global data into Google’s public cloud to create this custom platform. The hope is that it provides data performance that lets disparate data from across the organisation be aggregated into a ‘data ocean’ – rather than multiple data lakes.

Once this is complete, the speed with which Vodafone will be able to run queries will enable it to gain real-time insights, providing new levels of agility, scalability and cost-effectiveness, the company said.

Google Cloud tools have been integrated into the ‘Neuron’ platform, which is in the process of rolling out to 11 countries. The insights from Neuron are being used to support a range of applications, such as Vodafone’s ‘Gigabit Networks’.

«Neuron serves as the foundation for Vodafone’s data ocean and the brains of our business as we transform ourselves into a digital tech company,» said Simon Harris, group head of big data delivery at Vodafone.

«Not only will we be able to gain real-time analytics capabilities across Vodafone products and services, but it will also allow us to arrive at insights faster, which can then be used to offer more personalised product offerings to customers and to raise the bar on service.»

The company recently announced an agreement to expand its Gigafast Broadband throughout the UK by building upon Openreach’s infrastructure – namely its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. A key part of the deal is that it’s tied to Openreach’s own expansion and provides the option for further expansion later on.

Microsoft Teams has surpassed 20 million daily active users, an increase of 7 million since July, the company has revealed.

The collaboration suite, available as part of Microsoft’s premium Office 365 brand or as a free version, exceeded the popular Slack platform as being the most used business chat app earlier this year.

In fact, Teams now only sits behind Microsoft’s other chat platform Skype for Business in terms of popularity. However, the company has made it clear in the past that Teams will eventually supersede Skype as its primary tool.

Although Slack has grown to 12 million daily users as of October, that modest growth has been dwarfed by the successes of Microsoft Teams. Slack shares fell as much as 10% following Microsoft’s announcement on Tuesday, and have fallen 18% since the company’s public launch in June.

Meanwhile, Workplace by Facebook reported in October that it had surpassed 3 million subscribers, up one million since February.

Microsoft announced a batch of updates for Teams at its annual Ignite conference earlier this month, including a simple sign-on mechanism for front line workers, new integrations with Yammer and Skype, an expansion of the Advanced Threat Protection suite to cover messages within Teams, and the general availability of private chats.

Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription gives premium access to the Teams app, alongside its traditional productivity software. Commercial Cloud, the division that Teams falls under, is one of the highest performing areas of the company, making up over one-third of its overall revenue, according to third-quarter figures.

Slack hasn’t spent the year idle, having overhauled the underlying technology of its desktop app in July to help reduce RAM usage by 50% and improving loading times by 33%. The company also added new features in August that help admins manage permissions, and a Workflow Builder in October, that allows users to automate routine functions using custom workflows.

Today is what is affectionately known as day zero for cloud giant Salesforce’s annual get together, Dreamforce.

San Francisco will once again play home to more than 171,000 registered attendees, spanning 90 countries, with a wider audience of 10 million expected to tune into proceedings remotely.

The city’s Moscone Centre – and many nearby hotels – will be the main focus of a week of keynotes, more than 2,700 deep-dive sessions and celebrity guest speakers. This year, among others we have former president Barack Obama, David Beckham and – a particular highlight for the writer of this piece – Game of Thrones’ mother of dragons, actor Emilia Clarke, who is also the founder of a SamYou, a charity that supports brain injury recovery.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will also feature, perhaps quite heavily given the two companies have just today announced the launch of two flagship apps.

So, then, what else can we expect from the week ahead?

The link between an array of industries that are using the power of AI, cloud, mobile, voice and other related technologies will likely be high on the agenda. Marco Bizzarri, president and CEO of Gucci is also a keynote speaker, as is Oscar Munoz, CEO of United Airlines. There are myriad sessions featuring other key industry players.

Integration will be another key theme at Dreamforce. We’ ve already seen Salesforce and MuleSoft (a Salesforce-owned company) partner to focus on ‘clicks not code’ to enhance the customer experience so it’s likely we’ll hear more about that this week, too. 

The CEOs of Red Hat and Workday are also on the speaker roster, so we can expect to hear at least a hint of additional further industry collaboration and integration in this respect. Indeed, the cloud giant’s CRM already works with Workday’s HCM in a partnership that goes back many years.

“Come with an open mind, leave with a full heart,” the company says on its ‘Why attend’ page for Dreamforce. I have a feeling given the continued sustainability focus that people will be leaving with anything but closed minds, too.

Indeed, Salesforce today reinforced its commitment to sustainability in a number of ways, particularly when it comes to helping meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

«This year we’re bringing our commitment to the SDGs to life at Dreamforce and encouraging all of our attendees to take meaningful action,» said Suzanne DiBianca, Salesforce’s chief impact officer and executive vice president of corporate relations.

«Together, we can push further and faster to effectively address the world’s most pressing challenges.»

The headline figures are $17 million (£15.4 million) investment through grants and more than one million employee volunteer hours over the next year. However, in reality, the intention and commitment goes much deeper.

At Dreamforce this year, the organisation will help save nine million gallons of water by supplying beef-free lunches, and – for the fifth year in a row – Salesforce will also be offsetting on-site carbon emissions, employee travel emissions, and conference water usage.

The waste reduction effort goes further, still. More than 150 onsite volunteers will assist with local waste diversion in a bid to help support San Francisco’s 2020 zero waste goal.

This week is Salesforce’s 17th Dreamforce and the excitement out on the streets has already started to build, with the famous pin badges, stickers, and scout leader/ranger hats in full force. So definitely stay turned to the site in the coming days as we bring you all the news and views from the show.

Ultimately, as we approach the conference proper, we can see many things on the horizon. Not limited to innovative technologies and partnerships doing good for customers and their customers being showcased in San Francisco this week.

We also have the good that technology companies and individuals should be and are doing to lessen the adverse impact on the environment and continue to strive for inclusion rather than exclusion and division.

There’s going to be a lot to take in and digest over the next few days, but if everything I’ve been told thus far rings true, it really will be the biggest and best Dreamforce yet.

While data is the new currency of business, it’s worthless without ensuring individuals and organisations can rely on and trust in the integrity of that data. 

So suggested Salesforce co-founder and co-CEO, Marc Benioff, who used his opening keynote at the company’s annual Dreamforce conference to talk about how we have now entered the so-called trust revolution. 

“It’s a trust revolution. Everything is changing in our industry. Everything is changing in our work. It’s an intelligence revolution. AI is becoming such a pervasive part of our world,” he said, setting the scene to announce the launch of Customer 360 Truth, a set of services designs to aid firms in authenticating, connecting and governing customer data and identity. 

“[But] revolutions are not easy and there are gaps. Those gaps are also between us and our customers. We’re able to heal these gaps and bring these things together. That is also why we are building our Customer 360 platform. We have done this together. We are building this together.”

By better understanding customers, organisations will be able to more easily and comprehensively deliver more personalised and exceptional customer experiences. 

“We love data. Data is an important part of everything we are doing and everything that you are doing,” Benioff added. 

“We have moved from systems of record to systems of engagement. We then moved from systems of engagement to systems of intelligence. Now we have moved from systems of intelligence to a single source of truth. 

“As we pursue the truth, it requires us at Salesforce to transform. That is why we have also enhanced Customer 360.” 

Customer 360 Truth provides a single source of the truth by uniting previously disparate data from commerce, marketing, sales, service, and more, to create one, universal Salesforce ID for every customer. This ID brings together behavioural historical data that can come into play during a customer engagement – whether that’s marketing, problem solving, sales or something else. 

During his keynote address, Benioff used State Farm as case in point of what can be achieved through better and easier access to customer data. 

“We want to be about the customer and the customer experience is absolutely dominant in that, “ said Fawad Ahmad. State Farm’s chief digital officer (CDO). 

“I’m proud to say I work for an organisation that has always focused on the customer. We will always be guided by their needs, their dreams, and aspirations. C360 Truth becomes a single, reliable place we can go -regardless of where in the company – to be able to look at, and then leverage,  the intelligence that comes from the platform.’

Salesforce shone the spotlight on enhancing customer service during the first day of its Dreamforce event in Las Vegas by emphasising how important partnerships are in the equation.

«We have partnered with all of the other major companies,» Founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff told attendees during his opening keynote.

«We realise you do have more than Salesforce. We will not create boundaries between us. We will operate as one community.» 

At the same time, as further evidence and recognition of the importance of working with the right partners, the cloud giant confirmed it is expanding its existing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

“We have an inclusive partnership strategy at Salesforce. We talk a lot about listening to our customers, but we have to think through what they’re saying. Having an inclusive partnership strategy is very important [to that],” said Ryan Aytay, Co-CEO Quip and Salesforce’s executive vice president of strategic partnerships. 

“Companies are making this big bet and spending a lot of money bringing workloads to pub cloud. Salesforce is the world’s number one CRM and we need to be unified with a public cloud provider. That is a part of our strategy. 

“This is a partnership we’ve been talking about for a while. It’s the world’s number one CRM with world’s number one cloud provider.”

The newest element of the pre-existing alliance will see Amazon Connect integrated with Service Cloud, resulting in something dubbed Service Cloud Voice, which will ensure call centre operatives have the best tools at their disposal to deliver a polished customer experience. 

What’s more, by ensuring agents have access to all the information they need at their fingertips, rather than having to visit multiple sources, organisations will be able to increase satisfaction while also reducing costs. 

AI-powered speech analytics – in preferred languages –  will also be provided through Amazon Connect directly to call centre workers to further assist them in answering customer enquiries expertly and efficiently. 

“We have an inclusive partnership strategy. This is very important when you put the customer at the centre,” added Sarah Franklin, executive vice president and general manger, platform, Trailhead and developers at Salesforce.

Other strands of the extended partnership include the availability of AWS educational content on Trailhead and the exploration of ways to make Einstein Voice Skills compatible with Alexa and other smart speakers and assistants. 

“At John Hancock we are focused on making decisions easier and lives better for our customers, and part of how we achieve this mission is through our interactions with them in the contact center,” said Tracy Kelly, AVP Shared Services Contact Centre, John Hancock. 

“With the integrated Salesforce Service Cloud and Amazon Connect solution we can handle millions of calls annually, delivering the personalised and frictionless service our customers expect.”

Both Amazon and Salesforce, along with other industry players, are part of the Voice Interoperability Initiative, which aims to make use of voice-enabled products to deliver greater choice and flexibility through the use of interoperable voice services.