What Happened At The Salesforce World Tour?

In a report published Thursday, Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle said that the World Tour organized by

in Boston was well attended with about 2,000 people being present. The Salesforce World Tour in Boston marks the first of a series of events that the company is scheduled to host around the world over the next several months. Although the company did not make any major product announcements, it highlighted its new marketing automation solutions for the B2B market. In the report Pacific Crest Securities noted, "We had the opportunity to speak to several customers and partners. The major systems integrators have booths on the expo floor at the event. But, the partners provided some helpful insights." Partners indicated that customers were paying for the Salesforce Wave product, the company's Analytics Cloud. The initial news was that most customers were enjoying significant discounts for this product. The recent event brought to light the fact that some customers were paying more than $1 million for the Wave product. Barnicle said this was "very encouraging," while adding, "We have very modest revenue contribution assumptions for Wave in our model." Partners also indicated that the increased IT spending for security had not impacted the company. "In our checks for companies with March-ending quarters, we had picked up some weakness in application spending because of the increased priority for security. But, we did not hear of similar weakness from the Salesforce partners today," Barnicle wrote. "Overall, the momentum at the Salesforce World Tour was very encouraging. We continue to recommend CRM, but we are a bit concerned that FQ1 (April) billings consensus estimates seem too high. Based on the company's guidance, we are modeling 12.4% year-over-year billings, which are below consensus of 13.6%," the report added.