Salesforce.com’s (News - Alert) Dreamforce customer event is going on this week and they are talking about IOT in many of the sessions and in the hall. The roll out of the Thunder Real Time services for IoT points out the real time aspect of the tools.
Many of the examples, however, have little to do with IoT sensors but everything to do with customer contact. It’s easy for a layperson to be confused, since when it comes to “things” we can mean anything from a person’s phone to a hydroponic water sensor. In fact, the keynote from Uber is a great example of IoT that is not sensor-based, but is all about application software.
While I feel like the IoT emphasis points to some non–IoT examples, here is what is important about Thunder for IoT.
Analytics.
Thunder is a great tool for getting past the big data story and to the relevant data decisions. I often say that IoT becomes an Internet of Service and in all the examples Saleforce.com uses, the key goal is improving customer service.
This makes total sense because Salesforce.com is a customer relationship system. It also makes sense because the emphasis goes beyond the things to the partitioning of whom the things services.
The analytics therefore are not about the lake or the stream, but the individual droplets and their relationship to providing customer service.
Bottom line: the existing customers who want to use the data they have to improve customer service are going to find Thunder a useful mechanism. If they have devices that allow then to gather the relevant information, the customer experience is easily enhanced. Whether that real-time trigger for the event comes from a thing, a system, or even something as slow as a person is irrelevant.
The customer is served.
Thunderstruck.