Go East, very Far East

I suspect that most people, overwhelmed by the noise and churn of the mass media, don't realize quite what a big deal an announcement like this actually is: Driving Customer Success With Alibaba

today Salesforce announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba, an innovation leader that helps its customers transform the way they market, sell, and operate through businesses like Alibaba Cloud and Tmall. Alibaba will become the exclusive provider of Salesforce to customers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and Salesforce will become the exclusive enterprise CRM product suite sold by Alibaba.

Together, Salesforce and Alibaba will bring Salesforce’s #1 CRM platform — including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Salesforce Platform — to customers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Alibaba’s advanced, secure infrastructure and knowledge of these markets will empower our global customers with a solution that meets local business needs.

Most Americans, and even many people elsewhere in the world, are completely unaware of how rapidly the world's center of (financial) gravity is shifting, and how, increasingly, there's only one country that matters, in global commerce.

And it isn't the United States of America.