Salesforce's acquisition of Informatica strengthens its AI agent platform by combining trusted data with context. Informatica's data catalog, quality, and metadata management work with MuleSoft, Data Cloud, and Tableau to give agents the foundation they need. Yamaha uses the stack to automate support cases and improve customer experiences.
Questions this video answers
95% of all AI projects fail (cited as an MIT study by MK).
"10,000 plus connectors" (MK).
The agent is "resolving 80% of our cases" on help.salesforce.com (MK).
Chapters
You.
It's a major move that could reshape the enterprise AI landscape. Salesforce has completed its acquisition of Informatica, a leader in AI powered cloud data management. What will make it so impactful? And just as importantly, what's it mean for customers? And customers customers. I'm Keri Chow. To answer those questions we have, I'm joined by Meraliderer Krishna Prasad, AKA mk, President and CTO of Unified Agent Force Platform, and Krish Vitaldavara, Chief Product Officer and EVP at Informatica. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Mk. This acquisition promises to establish a unified and comprehensive data foundation. It's for the new era of agentic AI. What does that mean though? And what does that mean for customers?
Yeah, great question. See, think about it. You heard the MIT study. 95% of all AI projects fail. Why? Because it's not just about AI. AI is powered by data and it's more than data. You need a context. Context means you give the right information, the right thing to the AI so it can actually do better. And most of the enterprises to create this context, you need to bring all that data together and then you need to link it to the actions and then be able to go activate it in the right business sort of framework. That is what Informatica, along with our data 360 and MuleSoft, plays a vital role in really taking your enterprise assets that you have with data and really bring that context to the agent so you can revitalize and reimagine your agentic enterprise.
I'm hearing that word, so much. Context, context, context. Right. Chris, we know your AI is only as good as your data. We've just talked about that. How does Informatica help bring that trusted context to Agent Force, making agents more accurate and reliable.
Yeah, I think that's the core strength of Informatica.
Right?
When we talk about intelligent data management Cloud from Informatica, we talk about this rich set of tools. Like we talk about the data catalog, the data ingestion, the data quality, metadata management, master data management. So we bring all the tools that you need to do and create that system of record that MK was talking about. So you take the system of record that Informatica brings, take the system of real time that Mulesoft brings, take the system of activation from Salesforce, put it all together and to me that's what creates that trusted context and the foundation for ajantic enterprise.
It's like all these Marvel superheroes teaming together to create the Avengers. All of a sudden that's a good one. That's a good way of saying it.
Yes.
Mk how does Informatica work with, I mean we just touched on this, but how does informatica work with Data360, Mulesoft and Tableau?
Yeah, great question. So if you really look at what Data360 tries to do is to really take all your data assets and link it to where your business is run. We call it. It's like the activation layer for your enterprise. Now for that to work well, you need to have access to all your data, number one. And so Informatica with its rich set of connectors, 10,000 plus connectors like you can connect to practically anything. And it tries to also clean that data. And so that data can be easily now accessed by Data 360 to feed into your enterprise. Second, the Informatica, what you talked about, the MDM, is a very rich and powerful way to create that 360 thing about your products, your suppliers, your accounts and so on. And that works hand in hand with Data360. So you get that singular view of your customer, your product, your supplier and everything else. And again to run your whole business. The other big thing that Informatica brings to the table is an enterprise wide visibility of all your assets, all your data and other assets. So you can actually get that enterprise catalog, which co works with the Salesforce catalog that Data360 brings in. And finally, Lineage, you want to know if an AI is answering a question for you. You want to know the lineage for it. Where did it come from? Is it right, Is it wrong? So that's where the lineage that's there in Data Cloud, it gets augmented by the enterprise lineage that Informatica is bringing in. So you get that comprehensive view. Now it doesn't stop there because we have integrated tableau with data 360 seamlessly. So everything that I talked about naturally applies to tableau, right? And then finally it's not just bringing all the data together to create the full context, you need to bring actions as well. If I say I got this invoice and you want to go do something with the invoice, you want the actioning layer and that's what Mulesoft brings in together. So that's why this is like a power couple or like you said, the event, like all the superheroes coming together.
I love that. And we're going to kind of deep dive a little bit on some of the things you just mentioned. Because Informatica Krish, brings critical services like the Data catalog The governance, the mdm, the master Data management.
Right.
And quality, quality, quality, quality for a prospective customer. How will these services have an immediate impact on their data management strategy?
Yeah, I think actually it's better off if you take an example of a customer who has done this already.
Right.
Because we have thousands of customers who have done this already by taking data360 mulesoft and informatica and put it together. It was just extra work for them to get all these things to work together to create that context. What we are going to do is we are going to make it incredibly simpler for them so that they don't have to go through that unification process themselves and we can actually assist them. Yamaha is a great example because as you know, Yamaha has brands that are across the board.
Right.
They have keyboards, boards, bikes and whatnot. And they were going through their modernization effort and one Yamaha brand strategy and they use data 360 Mulesoft and Informatica to create that singular view of customer. And informatica with MDM, to MK's point, can also bring to that view other domains like product or reference or supplier. So they use that to build that unified view for them for that one Yamaha brand strategy. And what it meant is now that it's a singular brand, every customer experience, every touch point that you have with Yamaha can now bring that singular view back to those experiences.
Right.
So that's kind of where agents are going to be incredibly powerful.
Yeah. And Yamaha is such a great example of all those different industries all under the same brand. I love that. And one of the key things you said is getting rid of that extra work. Let's get rid of extra work. Right, MK, what does that mean for customers using Core Agent Force 360 applications in their day to day operations? Like what's it going to be like? Specific use case examples.
Yeah, I think it transcends all of this. For example, the best example I would say is our own. We eat our own dog food. So if you go to help.salesforce.com, you'll see an agent right there. And when you call, in fact, it's resolving 80% of our cases that are coming through without anyone else having to get involved. Imagine 24, seven, you don't have to call somebody, it just works for you. And that's part the of powered by. All this data and the context and same thing on the website. If you go to salesforce.com, it can answer all your questions about Salesforce. And guess what? It even sends you an email if you're a prospect. And we have a whole sort of prospecting that is happening behind the scenes and that is powered exactly by this context where we are able to pull all the data together about like say you visit Salesforce, we know who you are as a customer, what you have purchased, what is your propensity, which ones do you like just by the clicks that you've done on the website or otherwise and to be able to give you the right product and sort of sell you the right thing. And once you're a customer, make sure you're happy as a customer to make sure you're serviced well. And from the flip side on the employee side a few things is where again all this data comes together so that if you're a salesperson how do you prepare for a sales call or if you are running a life site incident, you have some issue going on. You want everybody to come together on something like Slack, but again feeding it all the right data so they can go resolve things faster.
I love it. Context, data game changing information here. Krish MK thank you guys so much for joining us and outlining what that impact of Informatica and Salesforce teaming up is truly going to have. To read more about the acquisition, check out the Salesforce newsroom announcement by scanning the QR code on your screen.
