Bangalore: If you are among those who believed that the mushrooming online retail is going to chip away at the massive reseller and independent software vendor (ISV) network that fueled over two decades of growth in technology selling, think again! Salesforce believes that there is a tectonic shift in the Enterprise IT market. (Read their blog)
American computing giant Salesforce recently rolled out its annual Dreamforce conference with a clarion call declaring that the channel partners would continue to be an integral part of the company’s growth that saw revenues rise from $4 billion over three years ago to $8 billion in 2016-17.
To prove the point, the top leadership of the company also unveiled a research report that suggested a massive skills shortage in the fast-expanding partner ecosystem of the company. Salesforce calculated that professional services revenue alone could generate in excess of $260 billion over the next five years. (Read the research report).
Keith Block, the company’s vice-chairman and COO was clear in his mind that the ISVs and the partners were critical to growth. “You have the mindshare, you have the influence, you have the content, you have the knowledge to paint a vision for our collective customers, and that’s so important. So, we’ve really doubled down on trying to build incredible relationships with you – investing in the partner community – to engage with C-level executives all over the world and in all industries,” he said.
He further reiterated that partners must be doing more than painting visions and bringing things into reality with industry specific products that leverage horizontal ISVs. “Partners should consider more than cloud, mobility, social media and data science and expand into intelligence,” he said while pointing to the Salesforce Einstein Artificial Intelligence platform released last month.
Block pointed out that business owners across the world were seeking productivity in their processes not to mention connectivity – via machines, humans or even a personalized journey. “All these trends are playing out, which creates incredible opportunity for the Salesforce ecosystem,” he added.
Echoing similar sentiments, Tyler Prince, EVP for Worldwide Alliances and Channels at Salesforce said, “We think and know that if the five-year growth potential of $260 billion is true, we are going to need ten times the number of consultants in the marketplace than we have today.
He quoted from IDC research to suggest that Salesforce partners were reporting average year-on-year revenue growth of 48% with a projection that by the turn of this decade, partners will generate $4.1 of revenue for every dollar that gets added to Salesforce revenue figures.
The figure includes revenues earned by enterprises that create online application and services on the Salesforce platform in addition to those who provide consulting support to implement and harness those solutions.
In a related reaction, Neeracha Taychakhoonavud, SVP of Salesforce partner programs said the company was connecting with several universities across the world to ensure that Salesforce skills were added to the curriculum.
In India, the company was partnering with the state governments to get their content into the universities while in the rest of the world, it was tying up with both public and some other institutions to get data science skills into the market.