Live from the Dreamforce 2011 keynote. Most of the really interesting stuff was already announced; Heroku now offers beta support for Java, and VMware added a scalable PostgresSQL database service, remarkably similar to the one offered by Heroku.

For the live feed of the conference, check out this link, and watch along.

Perhaps the biggest noticeable change between this year and last year's Dreamforce is the Oracle OpenWorld-style road-block outside. OpenWorld is renowned for stopping traffic on Howard St. in San Francisco, and setting up a large in-street eating and socialising area. This year, Salesforce.com has done the same thing, though the Dreamforce road-block will play host to Metallica tonight. Though Dreamforce has always been lavish, it really feels like this is the first year they're trying to compete on the same level as Oracle, VMware, Microsoft, SAP, and even IBM.

Really, the PaaS fights now taking place make just about everyone a competitor. Salesforce.com seems to really be capitalising on the success of its Heroku buy, and much will certainly be made of that platform here at the show.

Nothing happening yet, 9:05 AM, so 5 minutes late getting started, thus far.

Hula dancers? Incoming hula dancers? Well, a Hawaiian is blowing on a conch shell for some reason. Now he and a lady are singing. Very weirdly. I guess this is traditional Hawaiian music. 9:15 AM, still no real keynote. Sadly, no hula dancers.

Marc Benioff has taken the stage and is reviewing the history of Salesforce.com. He's now talking about the Arab Spring, and how the signs of the protesters say "thank you Facebook," not "thank you Microsoft." As Benioff says "It's not long before we have a corporate spring? When will we see a CEO fall because their customers are rising up? Or their employees are rising up?"

"How does the enterprise bridge the social divide?" Benioff has been traveling around the world, searching for change. He's been searching for best practices for companies that are breaking through. Benioff is wandering the audience shaking hands mid-talk. Now he talks about a three step process for a social enterprise.

At the end of the day its about your database, are you keeping track of your customers, are you growing and evolving your knowledge of what your customers want? you can learn more than ever before about your customers than every before in your database.

Step 2: create an employee social network. its more than creating a private Facebook for your enterprise. we saw the best practices, where you were collaborating. not about creating another island of data and collaboration. it was about integrating that workflow into those applications. including custom apps.

Step 3 which was a huge wakeup call for us, the incredible customers were creating product social networks, including your products in the network, including your customers in the network. listening an analysing deeply into the network, the product and partner capabilities were astonishing.

"Beware the false cloud." Big image of Sun/Oracle box. "When Bill Gates tried to say 'Windows can run on your phone,' that didn't work out. You gotta cut and start again each time there's a new paradigm."

Social enterprise is the big focus now. Salesforce's customer information now pulls in info from the public social networks. You can see your customer's personal info, his or her likes, dislikes, and what they're posting on Facebook. A new feature in this Winter's Salesforce.com release.

Database.com now offers an option for you to host your data in your own datacenter, while using it in your Salesforce.com applications. “This lets you take data in your datacenter and include it in your Salesforce.com applications,” said Benioff. “It doesn't have to be in our datacenter, it can be in your datacenter. We can continue to provide our updates and changes, but if there is key data in your datacenter, and you have a policy against hosting the data outside, or there's a government policy issue, now you have the ability to keep that data in your datacenter.”

Neil Young is here now. It's the thing to do, to bring Young into a keynote and ask him how he's not really at all using your product. Sun Microsystems perfected this move. Now Benioff uses it as well.

Benioff is now talking about Groupon. Lots of info on Groupon's sales cycle. Benioff says this was inspiring, seeing Groupon's integrations.

Data.com is the hot new site for Salesforce.com users. Benioff says this site is now filled with crucial info from data sellers, like Dunn & Bradstreet. Lots of good data for you to integrate into your applications, he says.

Tablets are the next big thing. "The change in hardware is being complimented by a huge change in software. That software is HTML 5. It's as important as when HTML first came out. It will allow us to offer applications that are managed as a service. Running on your iPad, but running in that service providers capabilities. For us, we're huge believers in HTML. It's a no-brainer for us to adopt HTML 5. How you use Salesforce.com on your mobile devices is going to change."

Touch.Salesforce.com is, evidently, the site from whence all tablet, iOS and Android developers will get access to Salesforce.com development tools.