Salesforce Maps a New Path Forward for Developer Success--Empowering Everyone to Build Smart Apps on the World's #1 CRM Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, June 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TRAILHEADX -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the global leader in CRM, today announced new Einstein Platform Services and Trailhead learning paths to empower its fast-growing developer community of more than 4 million Trailblazers to build intelligent apps that customers love and help advance their careers. By bringing together the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and interactive online learning, Salesforce further enables companies to deliver the next generation of sales, service, marketing and commerce experiences to drive customer success. Salesforce will showcase these innovations at TrailheaDX, its second annual developer conference designed for everyone to learn new skills and unlock their potential.

"There has never been a better time to be a Salesforce developer," said Sarah Franklin, SVP Developer Relations and GM Trailhead. "Developer success leads to customer success, and we are on a mission to enable everyone to skill up for the AI revolution with the smartest tools and training."

For enterprise app developers, user adoption and loyalty are key measures of success. Today's business users demand the same intelligent and personalized app experiences they are accustomed to in their personal lives. To keep pace with these expectations, developers need an innovative platform that makes it easy to incorporate the latest AI technologies into their apps. According to IDC, 80 percent of all apps will have an AI component by 2020¹. Today, Salesforce is democratizing AI with Einstein, as well as democratizing learning with Trailhead, empowering everyone to build apps faster and advance their careers.

Introducing New Einstein Platform Services for Building AI-Powered Customer Experiences
Salesforce Einstein, the first comprehensive AI for CRM, is an integrated set of AI technologies that makes every Salesforce app smarter so business users can be more productive and deliver personalized, predictive customer experiences. And since Einstein is a core part of the Salesforce Platform, developers can utilize Einstein Platform Services to quickly build custom AI-powered CRM apps. Today, Salesforce is extending its portfolio of Einstein Platform Services that will allow developers to create custom deep learning models to fit their specific business needs:

• Einstein Sentiment will allow developers to classify the tone of any text—from prospect emails and social media posts to customer reviews and message boards—as positive, negative or neutral so that companies can quickly gain insight into customer attitudes and then take appropriate actions. For example, an airline could create a custom app that uses Einstein Sentiment to analyze tweets and other social media to understand overall impressions and prioritize negative posts that require service responses.
• Einstein Intent will allow developers to train a model to classify the underlying intent of customer inquiries to automatically route leads, escalate service cases and personalize marketing campaigns. For example, a retail company could use Einstein Intent to build a custom app that automatically classifies inbound customer support queries to identify which customers are experiencing shipping problems and then proactively provide support messaging and tracking details.
• Einstein Object Detection enables developers to train models to recognize multiple unique objects within a single image, as well as the location, size and quantities of those objects. Einstein Object Detection can be applied to improve service, inventory management and retail share-of-shelf apps. For example, a beverage company can streamline inventory management and service by automatically analyzing photos of retail shelves to count the product, and then calculate and process a new order.

Salesforce Trailhead Fuels The Developer Ecosystem—Introducing New Trails from Atlassian, GitHub and Salesforce
Trailhead is Salesforce's online, interactive, gamified learning platform. Trailhead takes users on free, guided learning paths to gain developer skills. At the end of every trail, Trailblazers receive a badge showcasing their competency. Since launching in 2014, Trailblazers have earned more than 2.5 million badges, which directly relate to in-demand job skills.

"Salesforce has not only given me technical skills, but it has changed my life," said Damian O'Farrill, global sales operations & marketing automation lead at Autodesk. "I was running a business as a salsa dance instructor before I became a Salesforce developer. No matter who you are or what your educational background is, you can transform your career with Salesforce and Trailhead."

Today we are extending the Trailhead Platform to Atlassian and GitHub, now everyone has access to today's most in-demand developer technologies.

• Atlassian: Agile software development is the standard today for building and shipping high-quality software, allowing teams to move faster, adjust to changing market trends and continuously improve. As a leading provider of agile software, Atlassian is invested in educating developer teams on the history, culture and basics of agile development. With Trailhead, developers will gain valuable insights to help them be successful on any agile team. New badges include: Agile Basics and Agile Frameworks (Scrum and Kanban).
• GitHub: Seamless collaboration and source code management are vital to the success of every developer team. GitHub is a community of more than 22 million people working together to build software. Using Git—the foundational code GitHub is built on—and GitHub, developers can take advantage of version control while collaborating on code, allowing them to take their software development practices to the next level. Now with GitHub's new Git and GitHub Basics badge on Trailhead, anyone can learn how to leverage the GitHub ecosystem, use best practices for collaborating on code or gain an in-depth understanding of Git.
• Salesforce: The Salesforce Platform enables developers to build, scale and manage all of their apps with a set of Unified Platform Services. New Salesforce badges for developers include Sales Cloud Platform, Service Cloud Platform, Summer '17 Release, Lightning Data Services, Platform Events, Salesforce DX and more.

Unified Platform Services for Developers—Empowering Everyone to Develop Faster and Together
As the demand for intelligent apps increase, the speed that developers need to build at skyrockets. With new Unified Platform Services, developers can better collaborate across the business and build smart apps faster for sales, service, marketing and commerce.

• New Platform Events empower developers to increase business productivity and efficiency by building automated workflows and custom triggers based on changes to Salesforce data—including geolocation, billing and customer data. With more integrations between Salesforce and customer systems, developers can expand on the existing capabilities of other integration options including Outbound Messaging and Apex Callouts. For example, developers can create triggers notifying external shipping apps to send out shipments as customers place orders—all in near real-time.
• In the new Salesforce DX Open Beta, any developer—individually or as part of a team—can collaborate, manage and develop Salesforce apps across the entire lifecycle. Combining the power of Force.com with the Heroku experience developers love, Salesforce DX fully reimagines building, deploying and maintaining custom software on the Salesforce Platform.

The Salesforce Developer Community Gathers for TrailheaDX—Two Days of Inspiration, Learning, Fun and Giving Back
TrailheaDX, Salesforce's second annual developer conference, will take place June 28-29 in San Francisco, with more than 200 viewing parties scheduled across 24 countries. The sold-out event is a celebration of diversity, inclusion and equality, empowering a new generation of developers to learn the skills needed to land a top job in the workforce of the future. In fact, according to Indeed, Salesforce admin and Salesforce developer are two of the top 10 best jobs of 2017. Adventure awaits every Trailblazer at TrailheaDX. The event features:

• A visionary keynote from Salesforce Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Parker Harris, President & Chief Product Officer, Alex Dayon and Senior Vice President, Developer Relations & General Manager, Trailhead, Sarah Franklin.
• Dreampitch, the first-ever TrailheaDX startup pitch event, will give three startups built on the Salesforce Platform the opportunity to pitch their company on stage to a panel of rock star judges. The winner will receive a $50,000 investment from Salesforce Ventures.
• More than 180 technical hands-on developer sessions for every type of focus and expertise, including sessions on artificial intelligence, Lightning development, developer experience, mobile app development, API and data integration, security and identity, business logic and more.

Pricing and Availability:

• Einstein Sentiment and Einstein Intent are in beta. Pricing will be announced when the APIs are made Generally Available.
• Einstein Object Detection is in pilot. Pricing will be announced when the APIs are made Generally Available.
• Platform Events is generally available. Pricing is based on the volume of data processed.
• Salesforce DX Open Beta is a public beta not available for purchase.
• New developer trails from Atlassian, GitHub and Salesforce are generally available to anyone for free by visiting http://trailhead.salesforce.com.

Additional Information:

• Register for the TrailheaDX Live broadcast at: https://developer.salesforce.com/trailheadx
• Find the TrailheaDX viewing party nearest you at: https://developer.salesforce.com/trailheadx/virtual
• To learn how Trailhead can help you grow your career visit: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/modules

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow @salesforce and @trailhead on Twitter
• Get the skills needed for the workforce of the future with Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: http://www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Rights of ALBERT EINSTEIN are used with permission of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Represented exclusively by Greenlight.

¹"IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2017 Predictions" by IDC

SOURCE Salesforce

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