Salesforce unveils new analytics cloud service

Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce launched a new analytics cloud service today that it says will make complex analytics tools available to and useable by anyone.

Analytics cloud service Wave is "analytics for the rest of us", the company said during a conference call, before Wave's launch today in San Francisco at the company's annual Dreamforce user conference.

Wave, the sixth cloud service on offer from Salesforce, will target an analytics market worth $38 billion.

"This is one of the biggest announcements Salesforce has made in years," said Stephanie Buscemi, senior vice president, Salesforce Analytics Cloud.

Salesforce is one of the dominant companies in the burgeoning cloud computing arena, offering cloud-based sales, services and marketing products.

“Data is key to unlocking customer insight and transactional opportunities,” she said, “But data is trapped in legacy analytics [APPLICATIONS]. So, much of this data is unavailable, but needs to be.”

Wave will take in client data in any format, and can be searched and analysed in numerous contexts. Users can then view the data in several colourful graph and chart formats, which Buscemi said will enable users at any level across an organisation to explore and use it.

In the past, complicated analytics applications have been used primarily by analysts within a company, she said.

Anna Rosenman, director, Salesforce Analytics Cloud, said Wave can ingest data in any format, organise it in a search-based way, and integrate it for use across a variety of devices, "so data is shareable".

Buscemi likened Wave - which she said can analyse and filter billions of rows of database information - to popular online travel services used by consumers to quickly search through millions of international flights.

Companies can also use the Wave platform to build their own mobile analytics apps, she said.

Third party data can also be integrated into “mash-ups” presented in dashboard form.

According to Buscemi, Salesforce studied online games such as Angry Birds and Farmville to find ways of presenting business data streams in a more intuitive and engaging way.

"Today, salesforce.com is disrupting the analytics market, just as we disrupted the CRM industry 15 years ago," Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com, said in a statement.