Sergey Nivens - Fotolia

What does Salesforce Lightning, Wave enable for users?

Salesforce's latest upgrades to its Lightning and Wave platforms show that the cloud CRM company is trying to bring analytics closer to the individual user.

Salesforce Lightning is something a lot of people looked at because it was time for that interface to change. It was time for an adjustment from the tried-and-true interface that was developed in the '90s and mid-2000s. Lightning is giving a fresh new look to Salesforce products.

Bringing Salesforce Wave closer to the actual [CRM system] -- like having the analytics right in the Sales Cloud -- is going to have a big impact for Wave usage because it gets it closer to the actual user and puts it into the use cases that they're participating in on a daily basis. Users don't have to go outside of what they typically do in order to get the advantage of analytics.

Starting with the Sales Cloud and moving Salesforce Wave into it, I think it's the shape of things to come with the other clouds because it just makes it easier for users to get the benefit of Wave if you put it right in the context of a function like sales.

What good is having the insight if you don't make it easier for users to act on it? Being able to have the data and insight right in Sales Cloud and in that context, it's going to make a difference; it's going to make it easier and accessible for folks to utilize Wave if it's in the context of a system they're used to using. They don't have to visit somewhere else, they can have it right there and make it easy for them to act on data.

Next Steps

Check out all the news and reactions from Dreamforce 2015

How one airline is personalizing the customer journey

Running down Wave's UI enhancements

Beware of IoT data governance challenges

Dig Deeper on Customer data management