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Salesforce and the AI Revolution

Salesforce and the AI Revolution

In the early 2000s, Salesforce made waves in the tech world with its bold “No Software” marketing campaign, symbolized by the iconic image of the word “software” crossed out in a red circle. While it was a bit misleading—Salesforce still delivered software, just in the cloud—the campaign invited people to rethink software delivery. This marked the dawn of the cloud era, and businesses were ready for a change. Then, enter Salesforce and the AI Revolution. Today, we’re witnessing a similar shift with AI. The word “SaaS” is the latest to be crossed out in red, as AI-native applications, where AI is the core rather than an add-on, promise to disrupt service delivery at an unprecedented speed—far faster than cloud displaced on-premise software. Even Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), a leader in identifying emerging AI trends, admits to being caught off guard by the rapid rise of AI. In its State of the Cloud 2024 report, which aptly declares “The Legacy Cloud is dead—long live AI Cloud!”, BVP highlights how even the most optimistic predictions couldn’t fully capture the pace and scale of AI’s impact. The AI Revolution: Opportunities and Disruption The AI market is evolving at breakneck speed, and entrepreneurs are scrambling to stake their claim in this quickly shifting landscape. In the early cloud era, companies like Box, Docusign, HubSpot, and Shopify found success by targeting specific business use cases with subscription-based, cloud-powered solutions. Similarly, today’s AI opportunity lies in industries where manual, repetitive tasks are still prevalent. Major AI players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral are investing billions in building large-scale language models (LLMs), but there’s a gap in the market for entrepreneurs to focus on verticals where human labor is still largely manual—such as legal, accounting, and outsourcing services. Traditionally, investors have shied away from these industries due to their reliance on manual labor, high costs, and low profit margins. But AI changes the game. Tasks once done manually can now be automated, transforming labor-intensive processes into scalable, high-margin operations. Services businesses that were once unattractive to investors will now attract attention as AI boosts profitability and efficiency. The Shift to AI-Native Applications The impact of AI-native applications will go beyond improving revenue models; they will fundamentally change how we interact with software. In the current SaaS model, users spend hours in applications, manually entering data and querying systems for answers. In contrast, AI-native B2B applications will solve problems end-to-end without requiring human input for every step. Software will work for users in the background, allowing them to focus on building relationships and making strategic decisions. However, humans won’t be removed from the equation. AI trained on real human intelligence in specific verticals will perform better than purely machine-based intelligence. The combination of human expertise and AI-native applications will drive significant, tangible business results. Avoid the “X of AI” Hype With excitement around AI reaching fever pitch, many startups are branding themselves as the “X of AI”—for instance, the “Salesforce of AI.” These claims are often surface-level, wrapping an AI solution around an existing LLM without delivering true innovation. To identify genuine AI-native solutions, look for these key characteristics: Spotting the Next AI Success Stories The AI space is noisy and crowded, and as more AI-native startups emerge, it will become even harder to separate the winners from the hype. The true innovators will be those who bring untapped data into the digital fold and streamline workflows that have historically been manual. To succeed, founders need deep knowledge of their vertical and a clear understanding of how to implement AI for real-world results. Above all, they must have the vision and drive to realize the full potential of AI-native applications, transforming industries and redefining service delivery. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Generative ai energy consumption

Growing Energy Consumption in Generative AI

Growing Energy Consumption in Generative AI, but ROI Impact Remains Unclear The rising energy costs associated with generative AI aren’t always central in enterprise financial considerations, yet experts suggest IT leaders should take note. Building a business case for generative AI involves both obvious and hidden expenses. Licensing fees for large language models (LLMs) and SaaS subscriptions are visible expenses, but less apparent costs include data preparation, cloud infrastructure upgrades, and managing organizational change. Growing Energy Consumption in Generative AI. One under-the-radar cost is the energy required by generative AI. Training LLMs demands vast computing power, and even routine AI tasks like answering user queries or generating images consume energy. These intensive processes require robust cooling systems in data centers, adding to energy use. While energy costs haven’t been a focus for GenAI adopters, growing awareness has prompted the International Energy Agency (IEA) to predict a doubling of data center electricity consumption by 2026, attributing much of the increase to AI. Goldman Sachs echoed these concerns, projecting data center power consumption to more than double by 2030. For now, generative AI’s anticipated benefits outweigh energy cost concerns for most enterprises, with hyperscalers like Google bearing the brunt of these costs. Google recently reported a 13% increase in greenhouse gas emissions, citing AI as a major contributor and suggesting that reducing emissions might become more challenging with AI’s continued growth. Growing Energy Consumption in Generative AI While not a barrier to adoption, energy costs play into generative AI’s long-term viability, noted Scott Likens, global AI engineering leader at PwC, emphasizing that “there’s energy being used — you don’t take it for granted.” Energy Costs and Enterprise Adoption Generative AI users might not see a line item for energy costs, yet these are embedded in fees. Ryan Gross of Caylent points out that the costs are mainly tied to model training and inferencing, with each model query, though individually minor, adding up over time. These expenses are often spread across the customer base, as companies pay for generative AI access through a licensing model. A PwC sustainability study showed that GenAI power costs, particularly from model training, are distributed among licensees. Token-based pricing for LLM usage also reflects inferencing costs, though these charges have decreased. Likens noted that the largest expenses still come from infrastructure and data management rather than energy. Potential Efficiency Gains Though energy isn’t a primary consideration, enterprises could reduce consumption indirectly through technological advancements. Newer, more cost-efficient models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini are 60% less expensive per token than prior versions, enabling organizations to deploy GenAI on a larger scale while keeping costs lower. Small, fine-tuned models can be used to address latency and lower energy consumption, part of a “multimodel” approach that can provide different accuracy and latency levels with varying energy demands. Agentic AI also offers opportunities for cost and energy savings. By breaking down tasks and routing them through specialized models, companies can minimize latency and reduce power usage. According to Likens, using agentic architecture could cut costs and consumption, particularly when tasks are routed to more efficient models. Rising Data Center Energy Needs While enterprises may feel shielded from direct energy costs, data centers bear the growing power demand. Cooling solutions are evolving, with liquid cooling systems becoming more prevalent for AI workloads. As data centers face the “AI growth cycle,” the demand for energy-efficient cooling solutions has fueled a resurgence in thermal management investment. Liquid cooling, being more efficient than air cooling, is gaining traction due to the power demands of AI and high-performance computing. IDTechEx projects that data center liquid cooling revenue could exceed $50 billion by 2035. Meanwhile, data centers are exploring nuclear power, with AWS, Google, and Microsoft among those considering nuclear energy as a sustainable solution to meet AI’s power demands. Future ROI Considerations While enterprises remain shielded from the full energy costs of generative AI, careful model selection and architectural choices could help curb consumption. PwC, for instance, factors in the “carbon impact” as part of its GenAI deployment strategy, recognizing that energy considerations are now a part of the generative AI value proposition. As organizations increasingly factor sustainability into their tech decisions, energy efficiency might soon play a larger role in generative AI ROI calculations. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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AI Leader Salesforce

AI Leader Salesforce

Salesforce Is a Wild Mustang in the AI Race In the bustling world of artificial intelligence, Salesforce Inc. has emerged as an unsurpassed and true leader. “Salesforce?” one might wonder. The company known for its customer relationship management software? How can it be an AI leader if it is only focused on each department or division (or horse) is only focused on its own survival? AI Leader Salesforce. Herds of horses have structure, unique and important roles they each play. While they survival depends greatly on each members’ independece they must remain steadfast in the roles and responsibilities they carry to the entire herd. The lead stallion must be the protector. The lead mare must organize all the mothers and foals into obedient members of the herd. But they must all collaborate. AI Leader Salesforce To stay strong and competetive Salesforce is making bold strides in AI as well. Recently, the company became the first major tech firm to introduce a new class of generative AI tools known as “agents,” which have long been discussed by others but never fully realized. Unlike its competitors, Salesforce is upfront about how these innovative tools might impact employment. This audacious approach could be the key to propelling the company ahead in the AI race, particularly as newer players like OpenAI and Anthropic make their moves. Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s dynamic CEO, is driving this change. Known for his unconventional strategies that helped propel Salesforce to the forefront of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution, Benioff has secured a client base that includes 90% of Fortune 500 companies, such as Walt Disney Co. and Ford Motor Co. Salesforce profits from subscriptions to applications like Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, which help businesses manage their sales and customer service processes. At the recent Dreamforce conference, Salesforce unveiled Agentforce, a new service that enables customers to deploy autonomous AI-powered agents. If Benioff himself is the alpha herd leader, Agentforce may well be the lead mare. Salesforce distinguishes itself by replacing traditional chatbots with these new agents. While chatbots, powered by technologies from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, typically handle customer inquiries, agents can perform actions such as filing complaints, booking appointments, or updating shipping addresses. The notion of AI “taking action” might seem risky, given that generative models can sometimes produce erroneous results. Imagine an AI mishandling a booking. However, Salesforce is confident that this won’t be an issue. “Hallucinations go down to zero because [Agentforce] is only allowed to generate content from the sources you’ve trained it on,” says Bill Patterson, corporate strategy director at Salesforce. This approach is touted as more reliable than models that scrape the broader internet, which can include inaccurate information. Salesforce’s willingness to confront a typically sensitive issue — the potential job displacement caused by AI — is also noteworthy. Unlike other AI companies that avoid discussing the impact of cost-cutting on employment, Salesforce openly addresses it. For instance, education publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc. reported that using Agentforce reduced the time spent answering customer inquiries by nearly 50% over three months. This efficiency meant Wiley did not need to hire additional staff for the back-to-school season. In the herd, the leader must acknowledge some of his own offspring will have to join other herds, there is a genetic survival of the fittest factor. I would suspect Benioff will re-train and re-purpose as many of the Salesforce family as he can, rather than seeing them leave the herd. Benioff highlighted this in his keynote, asking, “What if you could surge your service organization and your sales organization without hiring more people?” That’s the promise of Agentforce. And what if? Imagine the herd leader having to be always the alpha, always on guard, always in protective mode. When does he slngeep, eat, rest, and recuperate? Definitely not by bringing in another herd leader. The two inevitably come to arms each excerting their dominance until one is run off by the other, to survive on his own. The herd leader needs to clone himself, create additional herd, or corporate, assets to help him do his job better. Enter the power behind Salesforce’s long history with Artificial Intelligence. The effectiveness of Salesforce’s tools in delivering a return on investment remains to be seen, especially as many businesses struggle to evaluate the success of generative AI. Nonetheless, Salesforce poses a significant challenge to newer firms like OpenAI and Anthropic, which have privately acknowledged their use of Salesforce’s CRM software. For many chief innovation officers, it’s easier to continue leveraging Salesforce’s existing platform rather than adopt new technologies. Like the healthiest of the band of Mustangs, the most skilled and aggressive will thrive and survive. Salesforce’s established presence and broad distribution put it in a strong position at a time when large companies are often hesitant to embrace new tech. Its fearless approach to job displacement suggests the company is poised to profit significantly from its AI venture. As a result, Salesforce may well become a formidable competitor in the AI world. Furthermore taking its own investment in AI education to new heights, one can believe that Salesforce has an eye on people and not just profits. Much like the lead stallion in a wild herd, Salesforce is protecting itself and its biggest asset, its people! By Tectonic’s Salesforce Solutions Architect, Shannan Hearne Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Bye Klarna

Bye Klarna

Fintech firm Klarna is cutting ties with two major enterprise software providers, opting to automate its services using AI, and hints that more cuts could follow. Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski discussed the move during a recent conference call, as reported by Seeking Alpha. The company has already stopped using Salesforce, a platform that helps businesses manage sales and marketing data, and has also removed Workday, an HR and hiring platform, from its tech stack, according to a spokesperson from Klarna. This shift towards AI-driven automation is part of a larger strategy at Klarna. “We have multiple large-scale initiatives combining AI, standardization, and simplification that will allow us to eliminate several SaaS providers,” a company spokesperson said, though they did not specify which providers or services might be next. Founded in 2005, Klarna provides payment processing for e-commerce and reports over 150 million active users worldwide. Despite posting a net loss of $241 million last year—down from nearly $1 billion in 2022—the company reported a reduced loss of $32 million for the first half of 2024. With reports suggesting that Goldman Sachs has been tapped to underwrite Klarna’s potential IPO, the company’s focus on AI could strengthen its profitability prospects. This isn’t Klarna’s first AI initiative. Earlier in 2024, the company introduced an AI-powered customer service assistant in collaboration with OpenAI, which reportedly handled 2.3 million interactions in its first month and replaced the work of 700 agents. Klarna was among the early adopters of OpenAI’s enterprise ChatGPT package, and the company claims that 90% of its employees use the tool daily for process automation. Klarna’s decision to drop Salesforce and Workday is part of a broader effort to replace third-party SaaS solutions with internally developed applications, likely built on OpenAI’s infrastructure. Siemiatkowski stated in the August call, “We are shutting down a lot of our SaaS providers as we are able to consolidate.” However, not everyone is convinced. HR technology analyst Josh Bersin questioned whether Klarna could successfully replace a robust platform like Workday. “Workday systems have decades of workflows and complex data structures, including payroll and attendance,” he told Inc.. Bersin warned that developing an in-house system could lead Klarna into a “black hole of features,” with a poor user experience as a result. Many in the tech world share Bersin’s skepticism, with some suggesting the move is more of a PR tactic as Klarna gears up for its IPO. Investors and executives voiced doubts on social media, with financial insights account BuccoCapital posting on X, “Is it actually the best use of capital to rebuild in-house? Feels like a massive distraction,” while Ryan Jones, CEO of Flighty, called the move “free marketing.” Critics also point out that Klarna has downsized its workforce significantly, reducing its headcount by 1,200 over the past year, and Siemiatkowski has hinted at further reductions, suggesting the company could benefit from cutting staff from 3,800 to 2,000 employees. Siemiatkowski remains adamant that AI will allow Klarna to maintain growth despite these cuts. Bersin also noted that many tech giants have struggled to build their own HR platforms, citing examples like Google, which recently abandoned its internally developed HR software, and Amazon, which undergoes similar cycles regularly. “Microsoft,” Bersin added, “spends money on their own products but partners with SAP for HR software.” If Klarna does succeed in developing an in-house HR platform, it would be an achievement where even some of the biggest tech companies have fallen short. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Copado Unveils AI Agents

Copado Unveils AI Agents

Copado Unveils AI Agents to Automate Key DevOps Tasks for Salesforce Applications Copado has introduced a suite of generative AI agents designed to automate common tasks that DevOps teams frequently encounter when building and deploying applications on Salesforce’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. This announcement comes ahead of the Dreamforce 2024 conference hosted by Salesforce. These AI agents are the result of over a decade of data collection by Copado, according to David Brooks, Copado’s vice president of products. The initial AI agents will focus on code generation and test automation, with future agents tackling user story creation, deployment scripts, and application environment optimization. Unlike AI co-pilot tools that assist with code generation, Copado’s agents will fully automate tasks, Brooks explained. DevOps teams will be able to orchestrate these AI agents to streamline workflows, making best DevOps practices more accessible to a wider range of development teams. As AI continues to reshape DevOps, more tasks will be automated using agentic AI. This approach involves creating AI agents trained on a specific, narrow dataset, ensuring higher accuracy compared to general-purpose large language models (LLMs) that pull data from across the web. While it’s unclear how quickly agentic AI will transform DevOps, Brooks noted that in the future, teams will consist of both human engineers and AI agents assigned to specific tasks. DevOps engineers will still be essential for overseeing the accuracy of these tasks, but many of the repetitive tasks that often lead to burnout will be automated. As the burden of routine work decreases, organizations can expect the pace of code writing and application deployment to significantly accelerate. This could lead to a shift in how DevOps teams approach application backlogs, enabling the deployment of more applications that might have previously been sidelined due to resource constraints. In the interim, Brooks advises DevOps teams to begin identifying which routine tasks can be assigned to AI agents. Doing so will free up human engineers to manage workflows at a scale that was once unimaginable, positioning teams to thrive in the AI-driven future of DevOps. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Data Integration with AWS Glue

Data Integration with AWS Glue

The rapid rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions has led to data silos across different platforms, making it challenging to consolidate insights. Effective data analytics depends on the ability to seamlessly integrate data from various systems by identifying, gathering, cleansing, and combining it into a unified format. AWS Glue, a serverless data integration service, simplifies this process with scalable, efficient, and cost-effective solutions for unifying data from multiple sources. By using AWS Glue, organizations can streamline data integration, minimize silos, and enhance agility in managing data pipelines, unlocking the full potential of their data for analytics, decision-making, and innovation. This insight explores the new Salesforce connector for AWS Glue and demonstrates how to build a modern Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) pipeline using AWS Glue ETL scripts. Introducing the Salesforce Connector for AWS Glue To meet diverse data integration needs, AWS Glue now supports SaaS connectivity for Salesforce. This enables users to quickly preview, transfer, and query customer relationship management (CRM) data, while dynamically fetching the schema. With the Salesforce connector, users can ingest and transform CRM data and load it into any AWS Glue-supported destination, such as Amazon S3, in preferred formats like Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi, and Delta Lake. It also supports reverse ETL use cases, enabling data to be written back to Salesforce. Key Benefits: Solution Overview For this use case, we retrieve the full load of a Salesforce account object into a data lake on Amazon S3 and capture incremental changes. The solution also enables updates to certain fields in the data lake and synchronizes them back to Salesforce. The process involves creating two ETL jobs using AWS Glue with the Salesforce connector. The first job ingests the Salesforce account object into an Apache Iceberg-format data lake on Amazon S3. The second job captures updates and pushes them back to Salesforce. Prerequisites: Creating the ETL Pipeline Step 1: Ingest Salesforce Account Object Using the AWS Glue console, create a new job to transfer the Salesforce account object into an Apache Iceberg-format transactional data lake in Amazon S3. The script checks if the account table exists, performs an upsert if it does, or creates a new table if not. Step 2: Push Changes Back to Salesforce Create a second ETL job to update Salesforce with changes made in the data lake. This job writes the updated account records from Amazon S3 back to Salesforce. Example Query sqlCopy codeSELECT id, name, type, active__c, upsellopportunity__c, lastmodifieddate FROM “glue_etl_salesforce_db”.”account”; Additional Considerations You can schedule the ETL jobs using AWS Glue job triggers or integrate them with other AWS services like AWS Lambda and Amazon EventBridge for advanced workflows. Additionally, AWS Glue supports importing deleted Salesforce records by configuring the IMPORT_DELETED_RECORDS option. Clean Up After completing the process, clean up the resources used in AWS Glue, including jobs, connections, Secrets Manager secrets, IAM roles, and the S3 bucket to avoid incurring unnecessary charges. Conclusion The AWS Glue connector for Salesforce simplifies the analytics pipeline, accelerates insights, and supports data-driven decision-making. Its serverless architecture eliminates the need for infrastructure management, offering a cost-effective and agile approach to data integration, empowering organizations to efficiently meet their analytics needs. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Salesforce Climbs on Back of AI

Salesforce Climbs on Back of AI

Shares of Salesforce (CRM.N) climbed approximately 4% on Thursday as investors responded positively to the customer relationship management software maker’s strong quarterly performance and its strategic focus on artificial intelligence to fuel growth. Salesforce has been making significant investments to integrate AI technologies into its existing products, including its messaging platform Slack, to enhance functionality and attract more customers. “We continue to see Salesforce as an underappreciated AI winner due to its unique data and early success in developing and deploying GenAI agents,” noted Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan. Despite concerns from Wall Street that reduced cloud spending might impact Salesforce in a challenging economy, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) company exceeded expectations with better-than-anticipated revenue, profit, and margins in the second quarter. Additionally, Salesforce raised its profit forecast for the fiscal year ending January 2025, as margins continue to improve, largely due to restructuring efforts undertaken last year. The stock is currently trading at 24.49 times Wall Street’s profit expectations, compared to 52.11 for SaaS peer ServiceNow and 13.30 for cloud contact center firm Five9 (FIVN.O), according to LSEG data. If the gains hold, Salesforce could add about billion to its market capitalization, bringing its valuation to 8 billion as of Wednesday’s close. However, Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow cautioned, “We think these results alone are not sufficient to drive a sustainable rally from here. For that, we need additional catalysts, which could come with the new AI solutions,” set to be unveiled at Dreamforce and launched in October. Some analysts suggest that ongoing growth in the coming quarters may be driven by Salesforce’s customer support platform, Agentforce, which has yet to be commercially released. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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SaaS Data Protection from Own

SaaS Data Protection from Own

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Own, the industry leader for SaaS data protection and activation, today announced the release of Continuous Data Protection for Salesforce customers, further strengthening its product offering to include unprecedented recovery and analysis capabilities. In an industry-first approach, Own Continuous Data Protection provides a turn-key solution that delivers significant value to customers that have mission-critical, frequently changing, or highly valuable data within Salesforce. Own is the only SaaS data protection platform that proactively detects and stores data changes in Salesforce by leveraging platform events to prevent data loss. “This innovative approach to Continuous Data Protection will provide our Salesforce customers with an unparalleled advantage for capturing every change to their data ” said Adrian Kunzle, Chief Technology Officer at Own. “From the company’s inception almost 10 years ago, it has been our goal to ensure that no company operating in the cloud loses their data. At Own, we are the first to reimagine Continuous Data Protection for greater data resilience and scalability, and to ensure business continuity. This new solution offers true continuous data protection, and equips our customers with the most complete dataset to enable greater data fidelity to power AI models.” Own’s release of Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is a groundbreaking development in data protection and activation. Traditionally, backup and recovery solutions that specialize in protecting SaaS application data leverage a high-frequency model that provides multiple snapshots per week or day. Continuous Data Protection from Own pushes data changes to a backup as they happen, allowing businesses to capture changes in their data in near real-time. In addition to creating a more resilient and scalable approach, the higher-fidelity datasets this offering creates will enable organizations to unlock new ways of leveraging analytics and AI models across their vital information. “This innovative approach to Continuous Data Protection will provide our Salesforce customers with an unparalleled advantage for capturing every change to their data,” said Adrian Kunzle, Chief Technology Officer at Own. “From the company’s inception almost 10 years ago, it has been our goal to ensure that no company operating in the cloud loses their data. At Own, we are the first to reimagine Continuous Data Protection for greater data resilience and scalability, and to ensure business continuity. This new solution offers true continuous data protection, and equips our customers with the most complete dataset to enable greater data fidelity to power AI models.” Continuous Data Protection is a step forward in the world of SaaS data protection, enabling Own Recover for Salesforce customers to recover rapidly changing, mission-critical data faster, enhancing data resiliency and scalability. Continuous Data Protection provides the ability to: The Continuous Data Protection offering will be generally available on August 19, 2024. About Own Own is the industry leader in SaaS data protection and activation, trusted by thousands of organizations to ensure the availability, security, and compliance of mission-critical data, while unlocking new ways to gain deeper insights faster. Own ensures data resiliency and empowers organizations to bring historical context to life for predictive insights and inspiration. By partnering with some of the world’s largest SaaS ecosystems such as Salesforce, ServiceNow and Microsoft Dynamics 365, Own enables customers around the world to truly own their data and transform their business. It’s their platform. It’s your data. Own it. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Everyone Is Implementing AI

Everyone Is Implementing AI

AI is undoubtedly a generational change in software, with its full trajectory still unpredictable. There is a perceived divide between the “Haves” and “Have Nots.” Companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Databricks are seen as understanding AI’s potential, with Nvidia providing the necessary hardware support. Many hot start-ups are Gen AI native, continuing to attract unicorn valuations. Meanwhile, several SaaS leaders appear to be lagging behind. We say, Everyone Is Implementing AI. Marc Benioff stated in their latest quarterly call: “Now, we’re working with thousands of customers to power generative AI use cases with our Einstein Copilot, our prompt builder, our Einstein Studio, all of which went live in the first quarter. And we’ve closed hundreds of copilot deals since this incredible technology has gone GA. And in just the last few months, we’re seeing Einstein Copilot develop higher levels of capability. We are absolutely delighted and cannot be more excited about the success that we’re seeing with our customers with this great new capability.” Everyone Is Implementing AI However, it remains unclear whether simply adding AI to classic B2B SaaS products accelerates growth. Despite significant investments in AI, companies like Salesforce, Asana, and ZoomInfo are growing at less than 10% annually. The main point is that while “AI Washing” might impress some investors, AI must significantly accelerate revenue growth to achieve more than market parity. It is essential to see how AI can add real value and integrate it effectively. But AI alone may not be a growth accelerant. Everyone Is Implementing AI Recent data from Emergence Capital shows that 60% of VC-backed SaaS companies have already released GenAI features, with another 24% planning to do so. Achieving “AI Parity” is crucial, but simply adding GenAI features may not be disruptive in the B2B space. Companies must go further to stand out, despite the challenges. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Rubrick and Salesforce

Rubrick and Salesforce

According to Gartner®, by 2028, 75% of enterprises will view the backup of SaaS applications as a critical necessity, up from just 15% in 2024. Salesforce, a key CRM tool for many of the world’s largest organizations, plays a pivotal role in driving business operations and accelerating revenue growth. Given its central role as the single source of truth for many financial applications, Salesforce users must safeguard against costly downtime caused by accidental errors or cyber events, which can have a cascading impact on interconnected systems. To support these organizations, Rubrik is launching Salesforce Data Protection. Rubrik’s Data Protection Capabilities The new Salesforce Data Protection solution by Rubrik leverages robust security features from Rubrik Security Cloud—a unified platform that integrates data protection across SaaS, cloud, and on-premises environments. This advanced offering builds on Rubrik’s existing data protection solutions for SaaS tools like M365 and Jira. Key Features of Rubrik’s Salesforce Data Protection: Rubrik’s Salesforce Data Protection is now available on the AppExchange and will be showcased at Dreamforce 2024, scheduled for September 17-19 in San Francisco. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Data Protection Improvements from Next DLP

Data Protection Improvements from Next DLP

Insider risk and data protection company Next DLP has unveiled its new Secure Data Flow technology, designed to enhance data protection for customers. Integrated into the company’s Reveal Platform, Secure Data Flow monitors the origin, movement, and modification of data to provide comprehensive protection. Data Protection Improvements from Next DLP. This technology can secure critical business data flow from any SaaS application, including Salesforce, Workday, SAP, and GitHub, to prevent accidental data loss and malicious theft. “In modern IT environments, intellectual property often resides in SaaS applications and cloud data stores,” said John Stringer, head of product at Next DLP. “The challenge is that identifying high-impact data in these locations based on its content is difficult. Secure Data Flow, through Reveal, ensures that firms can confidently protect their most critical data assets, regardless of their location or application.” Next DLP argues that legacy data protection technologies are inadequate, relying on pattern matching, regular expressions, keywords, user-applied tags, and fingerprinting, which only cover a limited range of text-based data types. The company highlights that recent studies indicate employees download an average of 30 GB of data each month from SaaS applications to their endpoints, such as mobile phones, laptops, and desktops, emphasizing the need for advanced data protection measures. Secure Data Flow tracks data as it moves through both sanctioned and unsanctioned channels within an organization. By complementing traditional content and sensitivity classification-based approaches with origin-based data identification, manipulation detection, and data egress controls, it effectively prevents data theft and misuse. This approach results in an “all-encompassing, 100 percent effective, false-positive-free solution that simplifies the lives of security analysts,” claims Next DLP. “Secure Data Flow represents a novel approach to data protection and insider risk management,” said Ken Buckler, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. “It not only enhances detection and protection capabilities but also streamlines data management processes. This improves the accuracy of data sensitivity recognition and reduces endpoint content inspection costs in today’s diverse technological environments.” Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Hubspot Hacked

Hubspot Hacked

HubSpot recently disclosed a “security incident” where unauthorized access was attempted on several customer accounts. HubSpot is an American software company that provides tools for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. It was founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, and is today best-known for its all-in-one growth platform that helps businesses attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.. The CRM company detected the incident on June 22, though it was publicly acknowledged six days later by Alyssa Robinson, Chief Information Security Officer at HubSpot. HubSpot seems to have suffered a data breach, but claims to have everything in hand – for now. Robinson stated that the incident involved bad actors targeting a limited number of HubSpot customers, aiming to gain unauthorized access to their accounts. Upon detection, HubSpot promptly activated its incident response procedures and has since been in contact with affected customers, taking necessary steps to revoke unauthorized access and safeguard customer data. HubSpot Hacked With how the statement was worded, it would seem that the attackers, whoever they are, tried to break into the account – but not necessarily succeeded. Still, the company proceeded with the usual practice in case of a cyberattack: “HubSpot triggered our incident response procedures, and since June 22 we have been contacting impacted customers and taking necessary steps to revoke the unauthorized access and protect our customers and their data,” said Robinson. As of Friday, June 28, HubSpot has not disclosed any communication from the hacking group, nor has it specified the full scope of the incident or the exact number of impacted customers. Despite having over 100,000 paying customers and achieving significant financial milestones, such as breaking the $1 billion annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark, HubSpot’s stock price remained stable amid the news, which surfaced through TechCrunch. Ironically, this incident follows HubSpot’s recent announcement of new data protection capabilities for its Smart CRM users. However, it underscores the ongoing challenges faced by major enterprise tech providers regarding cybersecurity. HubSpot says fewer than 50 customer accounts were victims of a breach in late June, all impacted customers were notified and all has been quiet since the initial incident. As of May 2024, HubSpot had more than 216,000 customers, so an incident that impacts fewer than 50 doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless of course you’re one of the accounts involved. What we know:  The company is not releasing many details about the incident other than the basic facts. The company said in a June 28 release that it detected a security incident on June 22, 2004, where bad actors were attempting to gain access to customer accounts without authorization. HubSpot’s detection of the breach triggered its incident response procedures and the company notified impacted accounts. On June 28 and again on July 1, 2024, the company reported no further signs of a problem. What’s not known at this time is whether the attack was targeting a specific group of HubSpot customers. Back in March 2022, fewer than 30 HubSpot customers were impacted by a data breach, but all of the impacted customers were in the cryptocurrency business. HubSpot joins a growing list of enterprise tech firms experiencing cybersecurity incidents. While recent arrests, such as that of the alleged ringleader behind attacks on Twilio, LastPass, and Mailchimp, offer some hope, cybersecurity threats continue to evolve with the proliferation of digital devices and AI accessibility. This trend poses new risks, including the misuse of AI technologies like deepfakes, as highlighted by concerns raised by organizations like OpenAI. As businesses expand their digital presence and adopt new technologies, they must remain vigilant against evolving cybersecurity threats to protect sensitive information and maintain customer trust. HubSpot is an American software company that provides tools for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. It was founded in 2006 and is today best-known for its all-in-one growth platform that helps businesses attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Impact for Marketers As marketers, our martech stacks are heavily reliant on cloud-based SaaS applications (like HubSpot) and cloud-based data storage from vendors like Amazon’s AWS and Google Cloud. Even on-premise applications and data are a security risk. The applications running in the cloud and the data stored there are at arm’s length from your data security professionals. More than 80% of the data breaches recorded in 2023 involved data stored in the cloud, according to the Harvard Business Review. Big breaches impacting millions of consumers get a great deal of attention, like those that struck Sony or Target in years past. But smaller, targeted attacks can be devastating to the businesses that have their data exposed, though they fly under the radar of the national press. The number of reported data breaches increased 78% from 2022 to 2023. The cost of the average breach surpassed $4 million in 2023 and is up 15% since 2020. How secure is HubSpot? Is my data secure with HubSpot? All communications between a web client and HubSpot servers are protected using TLS (1.0, 1.1, 1.2) protocol encryption using 2048 bit keys. We also provide customers with the ability to enable Two-Phase Authentication (2FA) to prevent unauthorized use of their portals. Another July Hack One of the most significant data leaks in recent history is reported to have occurred on July 4. The leak, dubbed RockYou2024 by the original poster, “ObamaCare”, on a leading hacking forum, compiled 9,948,575,739 unique passwords into plain text. This means close to ten billion passwords were leaked. That said, the RockYou2024 is primarily a compilation of all previous password leaks and is built on a prior RockYou2021 compilation of 8.4 billion passwords. That means between RockYou2021 and RockYou2024, about 1.5 billion passwords were added to the list. Further, according to the hacker, at least a few of these passwords were cracked using RTX 4090, a tactic that was warned about earlier. According to Cybernews researchers, “In its essence, the RockYou2024 leak is a compilation of real-world passwords used by individuals all over the world. Revealing that

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Stay Ahead of SaaS Threats

Stay Ahead of SaaS Threats

The modern kill chain is eluding enterprises because they are not adequately protecting the infrastructure of modern business: SaaS. Stay Ahead of SaaS Threats. SaaS continues to dominate software adoption, accounting for the greatest share of public cloud spending. However, enterprises and SMBs alike have not revised their security programs or adopted security tooling designed for SaaS environments. Security Teams Struggle with SaaS Security Traditional security controls that CISOs and their teams relied on during the era of on-premise dominance have become obsolete. Firewalls now protect a much smaller perimeter, visibility is limited, and even if SaaS vendors offer logs, security teams need custom middleware to process them into their SIEM. SaaS vendors define security scopes for their products, but customers must manage SaaS compliance, data governance, identity and access management (IAM), and application controls—areas where most incidents occur. While the SaaS shared responsibility model is universal among SaaS apps, no two SaaS applications have identical security settings. Understanding the SaaS Kill Chain In the context of SaaS security, the application provider is responsible for physical infrastructure, the network, OS, and the application itself. Customers are responsible for data security and identity management. This shared responsibility model requires SaaS customers to take ownership of components that threat actors target most frequently. Research by AppOmni indicates that a single SaaS instance typically has 256 SaaS-to-SaaS connections, many of which are no longer in use but still retain excessive permissions to core business applications like Salesforce, Okta, and GitHub. With the multitude of different SaaS security settings and constant updates, security teams struggle to monitor these connections effectively. The number of entry points multiplies exponentially as employees enable SaaS-to-SaaS connections, using machine identities like API keys and digital certificates. As the attack surface migrated outside the network perimeter, so did the kill chain—threat actors orchestrate their attacks through various phases: Case Study: Scattered Spider/Starfraud In a recent attack by the Scattered Spider/Starfraud groups, a user opened a phishing email and logged into a spoofed IdP page. Through social engineering, the attackers obtained the user’s TOTP token, tricked the MFA protocol, and gained access to Amazon S3, Azure AD, and Citrix VDI. They then deployed a malicious server in the IaaS environment and executed a privileged Azure AD escalation attack, eventually encrypting all accessible data and delivering a ransom note. Growing SaaS Attack Activity SaaS breaches, though not always making headlines, have significant consequences. IBM reports that the average cost of data breaches in 2023 was $4.45 million per incident, a 15% increase over three years. Threat actors frequently use tactics similar to those seen in the Scattered Spider/Starfraud kill chain, targeting SaaS tenants and exploiting configuration issues. Protecting SaaS Environments With these measures, security teams can gain the visibility and intelligence needed to identify intruders early in the kill chain and prevent breaches before they become devastating. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Single Digit Members

Single Digit Members

The Single Digit Growth Club: A Surge in New Members What Do Salesforce and Asana Have in Common? Both Salesforce and Asana: They have now joined the ranks of The Single Digit Growth Club, projecting growth below 10% for the coming year. It Wasn’t Supposed to Be This Way Why not? Mainly due to historically high Net Revenue Retention (NRR). Salesforce traditionally maintained an NRR well above 110%. Asana, despite catering to many SMBs (where high NRR is harder to achieve), also had high NRR until recently. With an NRR of 110%, growth expectations were typically around 20%-30% annually. With an NRR of 120% or more, as many companies had until recently (and some, like Databricks, still have at 140%+), 40% annual growth seemed attainable even at $1B ARR. However, while NRR is still strong, often at least 100%, it is no longer overperforming in many cases. Even high fliers like Monday.com have seen dips in NRR. Despite their smaller deal sizes, Monday.com’s NRR is the lowest it has been in over four years. The Impact of NRR Declines A drop of 10%-20% in NRR is significantly hampering growth, pushing even market leaders into The Single Digit Growth Club. But not everyone is struggling. The Haves and Have Nots in SaaS In today’s SaaS landscape, there is a stark contrast between the Haves and the Have Nots. Companies operating outside of B2B, those that are truly AI-native, and others are experiencing remarkable growth. However, within tech sales, a decline in NRR is severely impacting growth. Conclusion The shift to single-digit growth is a reality many SaaS companies are grappling with. As we navigate this new landscape, it’s clear that maintaining high NRR and adapting to market changes are crucial for sustaining growth. Like Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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Cyber Group Targets SaaS Platforms

Cyber Group Targets SaaS Platforms

Cyber Group UNC3944 Targets SaaS Platforms like Azure, Salesforce, vSphere, AWS, and Google Cloud UNC3944, also known as “0ktapus” and “Scattered Spider,” has shifted its focus to attacking Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, as reported by Google Cloud’s Mandiant threat intelligence team. This hacking group, previously linked to incidents involving companies such as Snowflake and MGM Entertainment, has evolved its strategies to concentrate on data theft and extortion. Cyber Group Targets SaaS Platforms Attack Techniques UNC3944 exploits legitimate third-party tools for remote access and leverages Okta permissions to expand their intrusion capabilities. One notable aspect of their attacks involves creating new virtual machines in VMware vSphere and Microsoft Azure, using administrative permissions linked through SSO applications for further activities. The group uses commonly available utilities to reconfigure virtual machines (VMs), disable security protocols, and download tools such as Mimikatz and ADRecon, which extract and combine various artifacts from Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID environments. Evolving Methods Initially, UNC3944 employed a variety of techniques, but over time, their methods have expanded to include ransomware and data theft extortion. Active since at least May 2022, the group has developed resilience mechanisms against virtualization platforms and improved their ability to move laterally by abusing SaaS permissions. The group also uses SMS phishing to reset passwords and bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). Once inside, they conduct thorough reconnaissance of Microsoft applications like SharePoint to understand remote connection needs. According to Google Cloud’s Mandiant team, UNC3944’s primary activity is now data theft without using ransomware. They employ expert social engineering tactics, using detailed personal information to bypass identity checks and target employees with high-level access. Social Engineering and Threats Attackers often pose as employees, contacting help desks to request MFA resets for setting up new phones. If help desk staff comply, attackers can easily bypass MFA and reset passwords. If social engineering fails, UNC3944 resorts to threats, including doxxing, physical threats, or releasing compromising material to coerce credentials from victims. Once access is gained, they gather information on tools like VPNs, virtual desktops, and remote work utilities to maintain consistent access. Targeting SaaS and Cloud Platforms UNC3944 targets Okta’s single sign-on (SSO) tools, allowing them to create accounts that facilitate access to multiple systems. Their attacks extend to VMware’s vSphere hybrid cloud management tool and Microsoft Azure, where they create virtual machines for malicious purposes. By operating within a trusted IP address range, they complicate detection. Additional targets include SaaS applications like VMware’s vCenter, CyberArk, Salesforce, CrowdStrike, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. Office 365 is another focus, with attackers using Microsoft’s Delve tool to identify valuable information. To exfiltrate data, they use synchronization utilities such as Airbyte and Fivetran to transfer information to their own cloud storage. The group also targets Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to extract certificates and employ Golden SAML attacks for continued access to cloud applications. They leverage Microsoft 365 capabilities like Office Delve for quick reconnaissance and data mining. Recommendations – Cyber Group Targets SaaS Platforms Mandiant advises deploying host-based certificates with MFA for VPN access, implementing stricter conditional access policies, and enhancing monitoring for SaaS applications. Consolidating logs from crucial SaaS applications and monitoring virtual machine setups can help identify potential breaches. Like1 Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

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