Salesforce’s Hyperforce debut: Workflow Automation Tools Unveiling
Salesforce’s release of new Einstein workflow automation tools is being lauded by them as their most significant tech advancement in their two decades of existence. Hyperforce is at the forefront, but what is it?
In the new year, the company plans on releasing AI-powered Einstein Automate workflow tools, as well as Hyperforce which is an updated architecture that allows user to move customer data and workflows to public clouds of their choosing.
Hyperforce is already available to Salesforce users in Germany and India. According to COO Bret Taylor it will be rolled out to a further 10 countries in 2021. He went on to call Hyperforce the most significant technology advancement in Salesforce’s history and went’ on to promise developers that apps on Hyperforce would be backward-compatible with earlier versions they’ve created.
Gartner analyst Jason Wong said that the move is a modernisation of the infrastructure that accommodates security, performance, and customer data residency compliance needs for users.
He continues, “This also allows Salesforce to reduce reliance on running certain products on its own data centers and, potentially, its infrastructure costs over time. As Salesforce’s growth comes more from international markets, the flexibility to support regional cloud deployments and multi-cloud coverage across regions is an important part of Hyperforce.”
Workflow tools are added
Salesforce is planning the release of a new set of workflow automation tools early next year, called Einstein Automate. The AI-powered tools will complement already existing workflow features like Flow Builder.
Flow Orchestrator is included in the release. It will be a low-code tool that automates processes like multi-user approvals for mortgage applications and contracts. Planned to be in beta by summer 2021, Flow Orchestrator offers AI-generated user prompts for recommendations and next actions in building workflows, as well as identifying potential bottlenecks that slow down workflow processes.
Mulesoft Composer for Salesforce is another tool that goes with Flow Orchestrator. It connects data in these workflows across applications and is expected to become available in early 2021.
Larger Salesforce customers will most likely have developers and administrators to customise Salesforce workflows for their organisation. However, for midsized companies who need a head start with pre-built Einstein Automate bots, actions, Mulesoft Connectors and process libraries, Salesforce has set-up a new page on its AppExchange marketplace that consists of more than 700 choices.
According to Forrester Research analyst Liz Herbert, while this all sounds like big news, Einstein Automate is in fact more of an incremental improvement to Salesforce workflow automation features. She adds that the most interesting thing about Einstein Automate is Salesforce’s emphasis on connection to applications from outside of the Salesforce platform.
She says, “I’m not used to hearing [Salesforce] openly talk about and embracing third-party applications that aren’t just their AppExchange partners. It aligns with this need we see today, to not be a wall-to-wall software company, but instead how your products fit in with other products.”
Dreamforce 2020
The first day of the virtual Dreamforce 2020 conference was when the new products were unveiled. The conference itself was much different to the ones in previous years. For one it took place almost a month later than previous conferences- they normal take place in early to mid-November. This year’s event will also be spread across a number of weeks of virtual meetings and sessions instead of taking place over two days.
Another big difference was the attendance. Previous conferences attracted roughly 180,000 attendees which turned whole blocks around the Moscone Centre in San Francisco into noisy street parties that features Salesforce mascots, meetings and musicians. This year however, CEO Marc Benioff delivered his keynote live, basically by himself. There were only a few guests that joined him on location, including Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield who was there to discuss the planned acquisition of his company.
However, more guests joined virtually, including Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo who talked about how her state’s COVID-19 contact tracing efforts worked on the Salesforce platform. James Corden, the late-night talk show host emceed the keynote remotely.
Benioff lamented, “It’s not the Dreamforce I wanted, or anybody wanted…but here we are. It’s a Dreamforce we will never forget.”
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