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NEW YORK — Salesforce used its World Tour New York City conference on Dec. 13 to unveil Lightning Web Components, a programming model that will make it simple for millions of JavaScript developers globally to code on the Salesforce Lightning Platform for customer relationship management (CRM), according to the company.

Lightning Web Components enhances the company’s CRM platform, Shannon Duffy, SVP of product marketing at Salesforce, said while introducing the programming model during the morning keynote. She called Lightning Web Components “the building blocks that you use to customize Salesforce and make it work for you.”

With the introduction of Lightning Web Components, “we’re empowering even more people – even more developers … to build on Salesforce,” she said, noting there are more than 7 million JavaScript developers around the world, who “are now instantly Salesforce developers.”

Among the main benefits of Lightning Web Components is the fact that it’s now “easier and faster for you to customize Salesforce for your business than ever before,” she said.
Salesforce CMO Stephanie Buscemi also used the event to tout the overall benefits of the portfolio of products that make up the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. In today’s world, she said: “Businesses have to operate quite differently than before. It’s not going to work to live in your department, in your division [alone] anymore. You have to reach across the organization and be able to share the data across your organization.”

Sarah Aerni, Salesforce director of data science, went on to demonstrate the benefits of the Salesforce Einstein artificial intelligence (AI) platform and demonstrated Einstein Voice, the company’s new platform service, announced in September, that it said at the time brings the power of voice to millions of Salesforce users.

With Einstein Voice, any user will be able to talk to Salesforce, opening up new possibilities for employees to work smarter and connect with their customers in engaging new ways, according to the company.

With the new Lightning Web Components, companies “can remove innovation roadblocks and supercharge productivity with Lightning Platform developer services and low-code tools,” Salesforce said in a news release.

The standards-based programming model “gives developers the freedom to use the tools they love to build components — reusable building blocks for creating Lightning apps and experiences,” the company said, adding: “By using Lightning Web Components in conjunction with other Lightning developer services and low-code tools, organizations can better utilize all of their existing developer and admin resources to collaboratively build high-performing web experiences.”

Lightning Web Components will be generally available in February 2019, Salesforce said.

The company is “constantly working and looking for ways to help our customers build faster, innovate and deliver new products to their customers and employees,” Mike Rosenbaum, EVP of product at Salesforce, said in the announcement. He added: “With Lightning Web Components, we are giving developers a standards-driven JavaScript model for building enterprise apps on Lightning. Every time we release a new platform capability, we see an acceleration of innovation in our 150,000-customer base, and we are excited to see what our community of developers will do with Lightning Web Components.” 

Largely viewed as one of the core technologies that power the internet, JavaScript is used in 95% of all websites, and IDC estimated there are 7.04 million full-time developers using JavaScript globally, Salesforce said.

But “there remains a massive shortage of developer talent today,” Salesforce said, pointing to research showing there are about 250,000 unfilled developer jobs in the U.S. alone, and “that threatens to slow the pace of innovation for many organizations.”

For more information about what Lightning Web Components can do for developers, click here.