Salesforce and Google partner in cross-platform agent collaboration

Salesforce Inc. said today that it is trying to break down the silos that separate enterprise customer relationship management data from their productivity tools, especially artificial intelligence agents.

It does this by expanding its partnership with Google Cloud, revealing a deep set of integrations that will enable autonomous agents to work seamlessly across both company ecosystems. The focus of the extended partnership is on “agent engagement,” Salesforce said. The goal is to enable AI agents deployed on the Salesforce platform to access Google apps such as Docs, Slides and Drive, so they can retrieve context and data from those platforms to perform complex tasks.

Cooperation will work both ways. Just as Salesforce agents can use Google tools, Gemini Enterprise will be able to trigger actions and retrieve data from the partner’s leading CRM platform. The promise is one of “bidirectional flow” of intelligence that aims to eliminate switching conflicts between different applications.

Salesforce describes this conflict as a kind of “hidden dynamic tax,” and says it’s a major factor limiting employee productivity. For example, someone might see a security alert appear on Salesforce’s Slack platform, but the context of that alert will be buried in Google Docs, with the final approval process residing within Salesforce itself. To cope with such an event, one would have to keep navigating between different applications, consuming valuable time that could be better spent on more productive work.

The second challenge Salesforce wants to take on is the problem of data gravity. By this, it means the need to constantly move or copy data from one place to another. This has always been necessary for agents to get the context needed to perform the most complex tasks on behalf of people, and it’s another big productivity killer. The company’s idea is to create a unified system that shares content across both platforms, so that agents can easily access the data they need, regardless of where they live.

Depth, field integration

Salesforce and Google have developed many new capabilities to address these issues, integrating the front-end “Agentforce” layer with Gemini and BigQuery, Google’s cloud-based data warehouse.

For example, zero-copy integration with Google Lakehouse will allow Agentforce agents to natively learn and act on data stored in Google Cloud without needing to migrate it first. The data will stay where it is stored, always secure, while allowing agents to access it in real time to help make decisions. Meanwhile, Agentforce now supports Gemini models natively with the Atlas Reasoning Engine. According to Salesforce, this will enable Agentforce to recognize text, image and video formats and pull from years of customer history to solve complex problems more accurately.

Elsewhere, companies include Gemini Enterprise and Slack. Gemini will be able to act as a cross-platform assistant that can, for example, summarize the transcript of a Google Meet while comparing it to a specific Slack thread that discusses the action items from that meeting. In addition, the Agentforce Sales Agent is given the freedom to work completely within the Gemini interface, allowing salespeople to participate, update their CRM records and make summaries without leaving any platform they are working on.

Today’s announcements should help Salesforce and Google move closer to realizing their vision of a truly independent business and a “business independent” that allows people to ditch mundane data entry tasks and focus on higher-level strategy. Under this vision, AI agents will replace the grunt work of the platform.

The companies said they plan to double down on their relationship in the coming months and years with deeper integration, involving more direct agents and more complex thinking capabilities. The ultimate goal is to blur the distinction between CRM and productivity tools and replace this with a single “intelligent fabric” that supports freelancers at scale.

Salesforce President and Chief Engineering Officer Srini Tallapragada said businesses are ready to fully embrace agent AI, but they still need the infrastructure to support that by allowing AI models to run across platforms. “Our deep partnership with Google Cloud gives customers exactly that, so they can use Agentforce in every part of their business and accelerate Agentic Enterprise transformation,” he said.

Photo: SiliconANGLE/Gemini