Salesforce’s move to launch a developer pack for wearable computing in the enterprise follows a well-worn playbook for the company, but also highlights how it is stepping up the innovation pace.
The explosion of interest in wearable computing is one of tech’s fastest rising trends. While big moves from Google, Apple, and Samsung will likely attract a lot of attention, we’re going to examine the broader potential that wearables hold for driving innovation in business.
The company on Tuesday launched Salesforce Wear and Wear Developer Pack, two efforts to get developers to create enterprise apps for wearables that can be contextually aware and cover everything from customer service to marketing and sales. ARM and Pebble are early partners.
What’s the takeaway here? For starters, Salesforce may be decidedly early to wearables relative to its other consumerization efforts. When Salesforce wanted to be the Facebook of the enterprise with Chatter, the usefulness of social media was well established. Salesforce wanted to enable enterprise mobile apps well after we all played Angry Birds and Candy Crush forever. And Salesforce hit a nice inflection point with enterprise cloud platforms, but others were there first.
Daniel Debow, senior vice president of emerging technologies at Salesforce, acknowledges that the developer pack is just the first step. “We’re going to open source the code, put it up on the Web site with support information and hit the road,” says Debow. Salesforce is planning hackathons and other stops to work with enterprise developers.
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