Cisco and Salesforce have announced a partnership that’ll see them combine their cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in a bid to lead the market.
The companies will merge their various different B2B technologies, including Cisco’s contact centre platforms and Salesforce’s cloud tools.
As well as combining the technologies, the two companies hope to use their experiences and expertise to develop and market new solutions.
Key integrations
The firms want to enable better, more sustainable data transfers. To do this, Cisco and Salesforce are already working on a plethora of key integrations for customers.
Cisco Spark and WebEx will be integrated into Sales Cloud and Service Cloud through the Salesforce Lightning Framework, which they say will change the way customers communicate.
They’ll be able to communicate in real-time through chat, video or voice and won’t have to leave the Salesforce app. This also rules out the need for an additional plug-in.
Related: SAP and Bosch team up to drive forward industrial Internet of Things
IoT a big focus
IoT is major focus for the companies, so it’s understandable that they’re going to collaborate here. Cisco Jasper and Salesforce IoT Cloud will also be integrated to provide increased visibility and control for connected devices.
The companies claim that this will result in “a more comprehensive and intelligent view” of IoT services and empower businesses to leverage the full potential of connected tech.
If you haven’t come across these products already, Jasper provides a real-time solution into monetising IoT technologies, and Salesforce IoT Cloud connects the dots.
Both Cisco and Salesforce are market leaders in the customer service space, so they’ve planned some more integrations. They want to create a comprehensive product for the area, delivering a communications infrastructure and an integrated, intelligent agent desktop experience.
Confident about partnership
Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of IoT and applications groups at Cisco, is confident the partnership is going to be a success. “Cisco wants to deliver simple, magical experiences. Our goal is for technology to fade into the background so people can get their best work done,” he said.
“Cisco and Salesforce coming together to form a strategic alliance can eliminate the friction users experience today so they can become more productive.”
Ryan Aytay, EVP of strategic product alliances at Salesforce, said: “Nothing is more important than making our customers more successful. We’re thrilled to announce this strategic alliance with Cisco, which will simplify the customer experience across sales, service and IoT and empower our mutual customers to be far more productive.”
Related: Intel ‘open’ to working with ARM to provide Internet of Things integration framework