Salesforce Data Cloud Emerges as an Obvious Choice for CRM Customers

Executive Summary

This report examines important product introductions at Salesforce’s September 2023 Dreamforce event, starting with a rewrite of the company’s core platform to introduce the Einstein 1 Platform, with its unified metadata framework. By moving more applications as well as Salesforce Einstein AI and Salesforce Data Cloud—the vendor’s data warehouse/data lake platform—onto this framework, Salesforce is speeding and simplifying access to its holistic Customer 360. With better, easier access to customer relationship management (CRM) data—coupled with the ability to connect to third-party data—customers can create unified profiles that power artificial intelligence (AI) recommendations within Salesforce apps, ease secure training of trustworthy AI models, and accelerate the delivery of data-driven workflows and actionable insights. 

This report provides a closer look at the Einstein 1 Platform, the benefits of Data Cloud’s now being natively integrated with AI and CRM within the Einstein 1 Platform, and the security and ethical assurances provided by the Einstein Trust Layer. C-suite and line-of-business leaders, information technology (IT) executives, and data management and analytics professionals should read this report to better understand where Data Cloud fits within their overarching data-management, AI, and analytics portfolio and strategy.