It can be a full-time job trying to keep up with Salesforce’s latest cloud offerings and messaging. However, it is always worth the effort, because the company’s pronouncements are often early bellwethers of the future direction of the software industry.

This has become particularly true with respect to the company’s evolving efforts to penetrate and gain a prominent position in the artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) markets. Salesforce’s most recent moves, in anticipation of its annual Dreamforce conference, also could be a key indicator of the rapidly changing competitive landscape.

Salesforce has been in the vanguard of promoting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and, more broadly, the value of the cloud. As it has gained success with its widening array of SaaS/cloud offerings, it also has borrowed a strategy from the traditional software industry playbook: adding a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) development layer to its SaaS applications.

And, now Salesforce’s new IoT Explorer package emphasizes the company’s application protocol interface (API) capabilities.

Click here to read our latest perspectives in E-Commerce Times about the industry implications of Salesforce’s latest SaaS, PaaS and API strategies in IoT and AI.

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