by Sarah Kelleher 
With the Salesforce mania of Dreamforce behind us, we are now looking forward to what the next year of Salesforce will bring us. The latest earnings report was released this week and tells us a bit about what we can expect from the tech giant this year. I read a great article from The Street which summarises the key takeaways from the report.
- Overall, the numbers look good. With billed revenue up 24% annually, there is still very strong growth with some big multi-product, enterprise deals contributing to this success.
- Despite the name, it’s not just about sales. With 40% growth for the Marketing and Commerce Cloud, and 34% growth in Platform products, Salesforce is proving that the “land and expand’ tactic really works.
- The focus of the business is paying off. The introduction of Lightning, Einstein and vertical-based apps has seen huge growth in targeted markets which has contributed to this success. Deals with other tech giants, such as Amazon, Google and IBM are also proving worthwhile.
- R&D spending is up. Investment in the key USPs of Salesforce is paying off. Trailhead, Einstein and the vertical apps are all proving their worth so expect to see more product development and announcements over the next year.
- Stock compensation for Salesforce employees continues to be high, which is something investors will take note of, especially with the huge growth in employee numbers Salesforce sees year on year.
As always, it’ll be an exciting year ahead for Salesforce filled, no doubt, with more tactical acquisitions and innovative product announcements. T
Since 2014, Salesforce has overhauled the interface/user experience for its core apps via its Lightning platform, launched a machine learning solution (called Einstein) that surfaces insights and recommends actions by analyzing data within Salesforce apps, launched many solutions for verticals such as banking, healthcare and retail, grown its international footprint via aggressive hiring and a deal with Amazon (AMZN – Get Report) Web Services (AWS) to host Salesforce’s apps in overseas data centers and continued adding to its stable of software and IT services partnerships (tie-ups with IBM (IBM – Get Report) and Alphabet/Google (GOOGL – Get Report) are among Salesforce’s 2017 partnerships).