India strategic market for us, will continue to invest in region

Cloud-based software provider Salesforce has invested significantly in India over the years, adding more jobs and expanding office space to support its rising customer base in one of its fastest growing markets, says Matthew Parin, Hyperforce product director, Salesforce.

Hyperforce is a reimagination of Salesforce’s platform architecture geared to deliver a more powerful and scalable platform to support growth and success of Salesforce’s global customer base, Parin explained. In other words, it will empower Salesforce customers to securely deploy Salesforce apps and services from anywhere while using the scale and agility of the public cloud.

According to IDC, the Salesforce economy in India will create 1.3 million jobs and USD 66.4 billion in new business revenues by 2026.

Salesforce is also driving immense growth for its partner ecosystem in India, which will make USD 6.55 for every USD 1 Salesforce makes locally by 2026, Parin told PTI.

”India was our first market for Hyperforce… customers across all industries – not just those who are highly regulated – are prioritising trust and safety, and Hyperforce provides solutions for these demands,” he said.

The company has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Hyperforce to achieve its goals and because they share similar values and responsibility regarding sustainability.

Excerpts from the interview: Q: How does the India market stack up in the global strategy of Salesforce? A: India continues to be a strategic market for us, and we have invested significantly in the country over many years, adding more jobs, and expanding our office space and partner ecosystem to support our growing customer base.

From a business perspective, India is one of our fastest growing markets, and we are committed to digitally transforming businesses and redefining experiences by capitalising on the growing cloud opportunity in the country.

According to IDC, the Salesforce economy in India will create 1.3 million jobs and USD 66.4 billion in new business revenues by 2026. Salesforce is also driving immense growth for its partner ecosystem in India, which will make USD 6.55 for every USD 1 Salesforce makes locally by 2026.

Salesforce has invested significantly in India over many years. In 2016, we opened a new Centre of Excellence in Hyderabad making India a leading global talent and innovation hub for the company. Our customer base is also growing rapidly as more businesses in India look to adopt cloud technologies and partner with Salesforce as their trusted digital advisor. We will continue to invest and grow in the region.

Q: What are the key tech trends to watch out for in 2023, given the backdrop of global macro headwinds and uncertainty? How is Salesforce helping companies navigate this environment and grow? A: We are living in a new world – one with escalating challenges that make connecting with customers harder than ever. Organisations are navigating an evolving trust and security landscape, along with new compliance and governance challenges and an increasing demand from customers to meet efficiency and velocity expectations.

Internally, technology and IT teams are demanding new tools, processes, and products to innovate.

In India and across the globe, organisations of all sizes continue to choose Salesforce as a partner to enable their digital transformation goals in this new world. Salesforce’s Customer 360 not only provides a data-driven suite of products and services to serve our customers, it is also built to meet the complex security, compliance, and privacy needs of our customers, at scale.

It adapts to the complex needs of our customers because of the platform it is built on: Hyperforce.

Q: What are the specific verticals that Salesforce is focusing on in India? Which are the new areas where you anticipate major uptake in coming years for cloud, CRM, and your other offerings? A: Customers across all industries, not just those who are highly regulated, are prioritising trust and safety, and Hyperforce provides solutions for these demands.

India was our first market for Hyperforce, and Hyperforce is the architecture we are betting on to support the Customer 360 needs of our customers across industries and geographies well into the future.

We recently launched marketing cloud engagement on Hyperforce for new customers in India. With this, customers can build trusted relationships with their customers at scale on the secure and flexible Hyperforce platform.

We’ve seen immense traction for all our industry cloud solutions in the region. For example, we’ve seen increased demand in the financial services industry, where we have several large customers in the space transforming the customer experience with the surge in digital transactions.

Manufacturing, edtech, auto, healthcare, retail and consumer goods also continue to transform themselves by leveraging technology to redefine experiences.

Q: What did AWS enable you to do better, and what benefits have you experienced running on AWS? A: A reimagination of Salesforce’s platform architecture, we chose to partner with AWS for Hyperforce to deliver a powerful and scalable platform to support the step-change success of our global customer base. Key features include data residency, security, privacy, agility, scalability, and sustainability.

Hyperforce delivers data residency benefits by providing customers with local data storage and processing options, which can help them comply with local regulations. Furthermore, Hyperforce is secure by default, delivering industry-leading features such as least privileged controls, immutable software artefacts, zero trust principles, and infrastructure-as-code to protect against configuration and change management drift. It also encrypts data in transit and at rest.

At Salesforce, we continuously monitor the global privacy landscape and adapt our privacy programme to help protect customer data. With the extensive list of regional, industry, and global certifications we meet, customers know they can count on us to manage even their most sensitive data.

The future of Hyperforce will allow customers to scale more flexibly within the Salesforce trust boundary. Our goal is that in the future, customers on Hyperforce will be able to adjust limits more flexibly within Salesforce to maintain steady, predictable performance from all their apps. We’re also committing to zero downtime for updates with Hyperforce, which will not only boost productivity but also create competitive advantages for our customers.

Hyperforce is built on 100 per cent renewable energy and allows us to explore new ways to conserve energy that we use to run our infrastructure.

We are committed to maintaining net-zero carbon emissions across Hyperforce operations, and we partnered with AWS because we share similar values and responsibility regarding sustainability. PTI