The Higher Ed Summit never disappoints and this year’s theme was “Make Change”. This was on point as Salesforce announced that Salesforce.com would acquire Salesforce.org. It doesn’t sound like much, but this was is a huge deal – financially and for market position.
This acquisition makes sense for a few reasons
- Streamlining the management costs/structure will allow more Salesforce.org funding to go straight into their initiatives and road map.
- Salesforce wants into the Education space badly
With the rebranding of their existing offerings into the Education Cloud, Salesforce is making a strong commitment into this space that already has some big players.
- Microsoft, which acquired LinkedIn, which acquired Lynda.com
- Amazon, which powers the majority of the ed tech sector on AWS
- Google, whose Google Apps for Education and Android devices
- Apple, whose mobile devices have a similair offering to Google
Not to mention the other major education technology players, private groups and internal talent development offerings.
My hope is that Salesforce will take this opportunity to refactor the various Salesforce.org initiatives (HEDA – now EDA and NPSP) to work better together as the Education Cloud matures.
For more details about Education Cloud, have a look at this Trailhead module (about 55 minutes)
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/salesforceorg-education-cloud-quick-look