A Force to Be Reckoned With

Simplifying why a complicated new product was so critical for the business.

A Force to Be Reckoned With

The Dreamforce Keynote is such an engaging event for Salesforce employees because it's often a showcase of our top technological innovations. And, if there's one thing that not even a pandemic can stop, it's Salesforce innovation. But the biggest announcement today may be one of the hardest to wrap your brain around because, unlike most products, Salesforce Hyperforce isn’t a product on the Customer 360 clock!

Then why is it such a big deal?

Let us explain. Once upon a time, a few genius developers created Salesforce, the "Amazon of CRM." As time went on, we found the product could be adapted for Service or other uses, and started referring to the software engine beneath Sales Cloud or Service Cloud as Core or Platform. Whatever it's called, some of the original code, written by none other than Parker Harris himself, is still running today. Despite its brilliance, changing customer demands required some innovative problem-solving.

What the Force?

You may have heard Bret use some fancy tech terms during presentations over the last year or two, such as "unified cloud infrastructure" or "multi-tenant service." Try saying that a few times really fast. More recently, Parker talked about Project Falcon on an All Hands Call. Hyperforce is what they were referring to.

In layman's terms, Hyperforce is a new architecture for our Core/Platform software, and a ground-breaking new way to use it. For the first time, Core can run on different cloud platforms; customers aren't restricted to our own cloud infrastructure. Think, AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Hypercurious!

The question on the tip of your tongue is probably, "Why?" Why re-architect our software to run on someone else's data centers? For that matter, why would someone want to run Salesforce on AWS or, gasp, Microsoft's (or anyone else's) platform?

First, about that architecture. Today, our major clouds (Marketing, Commerce, etc.) are separate from each other. Their software is silo'd in different data centers, requiring unique tools to manage each, and API's for integrations. Then there's the matter of the customer data - also separate, in different data centers and locations. Talk about separation anxiety! All of this adds a level of complexity that limits our ability to scale fast. In updating the architecture, which had grown to 35 million lines of code, our engineering team has set us up for the future. Hyperforce will allow us to deploy software fast because we won't need to build a new data center to run it or to expand for more customers. Our products will not be as silo'd, bugs will be easier to fix, updates will be easier to roll-out, acquired technologies will be easier to integrate ... among a long list of benefits.

The ability to host Salesforce's infrastructure on third-party, public cloud platforms, instead of on our own first-party data centers, also addresses a long-standing customer request for compliance with local data residency requirements. Using Hyperforce, customers around the world can choose to keep their instance in a particular location that meets data and privacy regulations specific to their company, industry, or region. Let's not forget that Trust is still our number one value - even if customer data may not live on a platform we can control as we do right now. To meet this conundrum, new encryption technology has been baked into Hyperforce which takes Salesforce's commitment to data security one step further. Challenge: met!

A Force for Good!

It was time for an update - and it was time to deliver Salesforce to any customer, faster than ever, with Hyperforce. Its launch is the culmination of years of diligent work and real innovation by Salesforce employees. Their work won't show up on the C360 clock but it will power the 360. To these engineering heroes, we say bravo and thank you!