Just two blocks away from where Salesforce.com Inc. will celebrate its gigantic Dreamforce conference next week, Microsoft Corp. played frontrunner Tuesday morning, announcing new additions to its Salesforce rival that focus on artificial intelligence and mixed reality.
In a media briefing at its Reactor office in the South of Market area in San Francisco, MSFT, +0.95% executive Alysa Taylor began her presentation by showing a MarketWatch opinion piece published last week about the growing rivalry between the Dynamics platform she runs and Salesforce CRM, +0.70% calling the article “a huge moment for us.” She then described new apps centered on the use of AI to organize and access huge amounts of data, an important focus for Salesforce for the last couple of years with its Einstein offering.
“No other vendor can provide this type of out-of-the-box AI capability,” Taylor said, without mentioning Salesforce by name.
The new AI apps are built for specific areas of large businesses: Sales, market insights and customer service. To underscore the importance of AI to these apps and the company itself, Chief Executive Satya Nadella made his only appearance of the program to discuss them, though it was on a video.
Microsoft launched Dynamics 365 two years ago, building a business that combines customer relationship management, or CRM, software — Salesforce’s specialty — with enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software in a cloud model. Microsoft is leveraging LinkedIn for data and integrations after beating out Salesforce to acquire the Silicon Valley professional-networking business.
Microsoft also showed off apps for mixed reality, an advantage the company should have as it sells the hardware for it, the HoloLens. The first Dynamics apps for the HoloLens are meant largely for industrial customers whose frontline workers use the headgear in jobs that require them to have their hands free.
”It’s this capability that’s providing breakthrough impact for their workers and for the first time bringing those workers into their overall company workflows,” said Lorraine Bardeen, general manager of Microsoft’s mixed reality workplace business.
As an example, Microsoft showed a video of partner Chevron Corp. CVX, +0.53% using the new apps to allow workers at its refineries immediately reach a remote expert through the HoloLens to assist them. The remote expert was able to see the same view as the worker and help guide them through the work.
“Previously [Chevron] was required to fly in an inspector from Houston to a facility in Singapore once a month to inspect equipment,” Microsoft noted in its official announcement. “Now it has in-time inspection using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and can identify issues or provide approvals immediately.”
The briefing came ahead of Microsoft’s own enterprise-software conference next week in Orlando, Fla., which will take place at the same time as Dreamforce. Reporters who cover the two companies in the Bay Area will more than likely stick around for the larger Salesforce conference, so Microsoft came to them this week.
Microsoft has enjoyed a strong year, hitting record highs and approaching a $900 billion market cap thanks to a 32.5% gain so far in 2018. Salesforce’s market cap, while lower at nearly $120 billion, has grown even faster this year, adding 52.7%. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.54% has increased 8.1% this year.
