Well, Jim, you’re absolutely right. There’s really three cornerstones with digital transformation,
and the first one is the customer. And of course, we do that in spades. We do that better than anybody else. And the second, well, we did that a year ago with MuleSoft integration, the ability to integrate all your data sources together so you
can get a more holistic view, or what we call Customer 360. But you’re really touching on the third cornerstone of digital transformation, which is the analytics and the visualization and the business intelligence to see everything in your
company. And as you know, Jim, there’s no more amazing company in that category than Tableau, whose mission is to make sure that the world can see and understand data, and that is what excites us as well.
Well, I think it’s important to point out – Adam Selipsky’s been on the show. There was a time when we really weren’t that interested
on our show with Tableau data because I didn’t really think it was a cloud-based company. Adam comes from Amazon. In a remarkably short period of time, he makes it really so it can be if you want on-premise, you want cloud, it’s still
the best data. It sounded like there’s some of your key customers, like the one you mentioned in Minnesota, were demanding that you merge or have something, a deal, with these guys.
Well, you’re exactly right. I was in Minneapolis just last week, and when I was with one of our very largest customers, they’re doing some
incredible work with their supply chain and the ability to connect with their customer on a whole new way. And, of course, that’s what we do for them. But at the very end of the meeting, they’re talking about how they’re going to
visualize and provide analytics and business intelligence on this incredible infrastructure that we’ve helped them build, and they had chosen Tableau. And then, of course, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Wow, this is just going
to be an incredible acquisition for Salesforce.” Because it’s really the best of both worlds. It’s two amazing companies coming together. And Tableau is a company at scale, Jim. It’s an incredible company, and putting that
together with Salesforce, it just supercharges both of our organizations.
Well, do you think people just have short memories? I mean, literally, just a
little more than a year ago, you bought MuleSoft. I know you did it on our show, our morning show, and I said, “Marc, you paid too much.” And you said, “Jim, that’s short-sighted. Look what’s going to happen.” It was
seven days and then the stock was back. I mean, I think, once again, you have [delusion?], but the cash flow’s fantastic for the two companies together.
Well, first of all, in terms of cash flow, Jim, I don’t know if you remember our quarter that we just announced last week, but we had record cash flows
and we’ve had phenomenal cash generation. Our business has done a great job in cash. But I have to be honest with you, Jim. Tableau didn’t want our cash. They wanted our equity because they know that the real value here is in the company
that we’re creating together. And we would’ve been more than happy to give them any currency they wanted, but ultimately, they want our stock, and hey, I can’t blame them. Look at how it’s performed over the last decade.
It’s been incredible. And I have a huge vision, and so do they, on what’s possible for the future. And when you look at that, we’re really looking at a company that’s going to fast-track to 30 billion in revenue and enterprise
software, and there just isn’t very many of those companies out there today.
Now, someone was saying to me, “Look, Jim, if you think
they’re so smart, why couldn’t they just go build this themselves?” I said, in return, that you want both ease to use and the best in show. Because I think if you just talked about Trailhead for a second, people would recognize using
that public site that you suggest everybody look at, why this is so synergistic.
I have to be honest with you, Jim. I am a huge believer in innovation.
It’s one of our core values. You know our four core values: trust, customer success, innovation, and equality. Well, let me just talk about innovation for a second. I so strongly believe in not just organic innovation—and you’ve seen
that, of course, our core Sales Cloud, our core Service Cloud, our core platform—but I also strongly believe that companies, to be competitive and successful today, have to also believe in inorganic innovation, and you don’t have to look
any further than things like our Marketing Cloud or our Commerce Cloud, and you’ve spoken, now, about our Integration Cloud as well. And in these technologies, we were able to acquire great companies, companies that you know like ExactTarget,
like Demandware, and like MuleSoft, that became the heart of our Customer 360. We can’t build the technology fast enough to be able to deliver to our customers’ demand. And now, by doing that, we’re able to create this complete
Customer 360 platform that gives our customers everything they do to not only connect with their customers in a whole new way, not only to connect with every data source they have, but also to be able to have the visualization, data analytics, and
business intelligence to achieve their total success. And for digital transformation, which is what’s happening right now, Jim, that is mission critical.