SE5E04 - Salesforce Goes Headless and other stuff :-)

The thirty-eighth episode of the podcast that you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts from and additionally in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). It's Matt and Alan this month, celebrating the 3rd birthday of the pod (even if the episode numbers don't exactly add up), talking Salesforce, Work Intelligence and M&A.

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: Salesforce Goes Headless

Starting off, Matt has remembered that it's the 3rd birthday of the pod, with the first episode being uploaded n the 19th April 2023 (just don't ask how come it's episode 38 when the pod has been running for 36 months). Alan has been in San Francisco at Salesforce TDX (the conference for Salesforce developers) and whilst he was there, he wrote a blog post about the announcements and Salesforce's technical progress, most notably the newly announced Headless 360. He explains the change in focus at the conference, from the core audience of Salesforce admins and Apex developers to increasingly opening up to developers that are not coming from a purely Salesforce background, in large part driven by Agentforce and Data 360. Matt points out that Headless 360 is an encapsulation of a technical approach, rather than a product and points to the 60+ MCP servers as the increase in potential complexity - as well as openness - for that extended developer community. 

Topic 2: Work Intelligence 2026

Last month, we released the 4th edition of the Work Intelligence Market Analysis, covering the period 2026-2031 (it's available right away for Deep Analysis subscribers as part of their cache of content, it's also available for non subscribers for one off purchase). If you're not familiar with Work Intelligence, there's a free primer from 2022 that's free to download for everyone. Here Matt summarises some of the content in the report, the projected value of the markets and the other details available in the report. Alan points out that even though the concept is now a few years old, it's now clear that the market is aligning with the basis of the world that we described in that initial report. Matt talks about some of the market growth data and then mentions that he's recently published an addendum to the report, which compares our market projections year-on-year. Finally Matt has some scary information about M&A data that's contained in certain other market reports - not written by Deep Analysis - that we've come across. Then there's some kind of related "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" chat.

Topic 3: M&A(&AI)

Whilst we're thinking about M&A, Matt has decided to mention one of the many pieces of content that Deep Analysis publishes, but sometimes forget to tell you all about. One such item is the quarterly M&A round up for the unstructured data automation market (i.e. the part of the market in which we specialise); who bought who and what market dynamics can be observed. This is available to all Deep Analysis subscribers, who get to see all the deals; large and small. In passing Alan mentions his blog post celebrating OpenText's new CEO's first day at his desk. Matt and Alan then go on to discuss how di