SAN FRANCISCO, March 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) today announced a global strategic
partnership to deliver joint solutions designed to leverage
artificial intelligence and enable companies to make smarter
decisions, faster than ever before. With the partnership, IBM
Watson, the leading AI platform for business, and Salesforce
Einstein, AI that powers the world's #1 CRM, will seamlessly
connect to enable an entirely new level of intelligent customer
engagement across sales, service, marketing, commerce and
more. IBM is also strategically investing in its Global
Business Services capabilities for Salesforce with a new practice
to help clients rapidly deploy the combined IBM Watson and
Salesforce Einstein capabilities.
The partnership will bring new insights from
Watson directly into the Salesforce Intelligent Customer
Success Platform, combining deep customer insights from Salesforce
Einstein with Watson's structured and unstructured data across many
sources and industries including weather, healthcare, financial
services and retail. Together, Watson and Einstein will
ingest, reason over and derive recommendations to accelerate
decision making and drive greater customer success.
Comments on the News:
"Within a few years, every major
decision—personal or business—will be made with the help of AI and
cognitive technologies," said Ginni
Rometty, chairman, president and chief executive officer,
IBM. "This year we expect Watson will touch one billion
people—through everything from oncology and retail to tax
preparation and cars. Now, with today's announcement, the power of
Watson will serve the millions of Salesforce and Einstein customers
and developers to provide an unprecedented understanding of
customers."
"The combination of Einstein and Watson will make businesses
smarter and our customers more successful," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce. "I'm
thrilled to form an alliance with IBM—no company's core values are
as close to Salesforce's as IBM's. It's the best of both
worlds."
Salesforce and IBM will initially deliver the following:
IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein Integration:
Integrating IBM Watson APIs into Salesforce will bring predictive
insights from unstructured data, inside or outside an enterprise,
together with predictive insights from customer data delivered by
Salesforce Einstein to enable smarter, faster decisions across
sales, service, marketing, commerce and more. For example, by
combining local shopping patterns, weather and retail industry data
from Watson with customer-specific shopping data and preferences
from Salesforce Einstein, a retailer will be able to automatically
send highly personalized and localized email campaigns to
shoppers.
IBM Weather Insights for Salesforce: The Weather Company,
an IBM business, will power a new Lightning component on the
Salesforce AppExchange to provide weather insights that inform
customer interactions and business performance. For example, an
insurance company will be able to pull local forecast data from IBM
Weather into Salesforce, and automatically send safety and policy
information to customers who are at risk of being impacted by
severe weather events.
IBM Application Integration Suite for Salesforce:
Customers will be able to able to bring together on-premise
enterprise and cloud data with specialized integration products for
Salesforce, surfacing that data directly within the Salesforce
Intelligent Customer Success Platform. For example, a wealth
advisor will be able to unify client data, such as individual
investments and risk profiles, with financial trends and public
macroeconomic information from Application Integration
Suite right within Salesforce to make smarter decisions for
her customers.
Bluewolf Dedicated Consulting Services and Expertise for
Cognitive Solutions, Adding to IBM Strategic Services for
Salesforce: Bluewolf, an IBM company, has formed a new practice
to help clients rapidly deploy the combined IBM Watson and
Salesforce Einstein capabilities. This new unit capitalizes on
Bluewolf's over fifteen years of Salesforce implementations and
their current portfolio of multiple Salesforce and Watson projects.
Bluewolf will also develop new industry-specific accelerators used
by enterprise clients to accelerate adoption of cognitive
applications.
As part of the partnership, IBM will deploy Salesforce Service
Cloud across the company to transform its global product support
services and gain a single, unified view of every IBM customer.
Pricing and Availability
- The IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein integration is expected
to be available in the second half of 2017. Pricing will be
announced at the time of general availability.
- IBM Weather Lightning Component on Salesforce AppExchange is
expected to be available in the second half of 2017. Pricing will
be announced at the time of general availability.
- Bluewolf, an IBM company, expects to offer new industry-focused
Solution Accelerators at in the second half of 2017. Pricing will
be announced at the time of general availability.
- IBM Application Integration Suite for Salesforce is expected to
be available by the end of March
2017. Pricing will be announced at the time of general
availability.
About IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing
Watson represents a new era in computing called cognitive
computing, where systems understand the world in a way more similar
to humans: through senses, learning, and experience. Watson
continuously learns from previous interactions, gaining in value
and knowledge over time. With the help of Watson, organizations are
harnessing the power of cognitive computing to transform
industries, help professionals do their jobs better, and solve
important challenges.
As part of IBM's strategy to accelerate the growth of cognitive
computing, Watson is open to the world, allowing a growing
community of developers, students, entrepreneurs and tech
enthusiasts to easily tap into the most advanced and diverse
cognitive computing platform available today. Watson solutions are
being built, used and deployed in more than 45 countries and across
20 different industries.
For more information on IBM Watson, visit: ibm.com/watson. Join
the conversation at #ibmwatson.
About Salesforce
Salesforce, the world's #1 CRM and
the Intelligence Customer Success Platform, empowers companies to
connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more
information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit:
www.salesforce.com.
Rights of ALBERT EINSTEIN are
used with permission of The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. Represented exclusively by Greenlight.
Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other
press releases or public statements are not currently available and
may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase
Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based
upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has
headquarters in San Francisco,
with offices in Europe and
Asia, and trades on the New York
Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information
please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call
1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
Contact:
|
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Kate
McLaughlin
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Katy
Rosati
|
Salesforce
|
IBM Media
Relations
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kmclaughlin@salesforce.com
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krosati@us.ibm.com
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415-778-3287
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917-421-7543
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SOURCE IBM