Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily news and commentary show, hosted by Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the Cloud.
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In this Cloud Wars Minute, Bob shares his suggestions for the Salesforce CEO after the company announced a sweeping layoff this week.
Highlights
00:33 — Yesterday, Salesforce had to announce a major layoff, consisting of around 7,500 employees, across the company. Although some of them may be necessary, layoffs are not the solution to the deeper problems affecting Salesforce currently.
01:00 — Over the last year or so, an increasing amount of CEO Marc Benioff’s comments have been to Wall Street and to investors, many of whom have been about profits. CFO Amy Weaver has done a great job reorganizing some of the ways that the company works to deliver a higher level of profit. However, that was happening while the company was growing 20% or more per quarter — then, that rate fell to 14% last quarter.
01:43 — The layoffs were not the cause of the growth rate fall. Rather, the layoffs were a symptom of underlying problems inside the company.
02:03 — Bob identifies four big issues that Salesforce will have to deal with:
- The decline of the growth rate to 14% — how can the company get that back on track?
- The departures of co-CEO Bret Taylor and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield — what pushed these high-level executives out?
- The trigger of the “no guidance” decision from the last earnings call
- The release of Genie
03:45 — Bob suggests three areas in which Salesforce has a chance to grow:
- Net zero cloud
- Industry cloud business
- Partners and ecosystem business
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