Networking and cloud vendor Cisco Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif., and San Francisco, Calif.-based hosted CRM leader Salesforce.com Inc. have entered into a strategic agreement aimed at building Cisco collaboration, contact center, and Internet of Things technologies into Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, IoT Cloud, and Service Cloud offerings.
On the collaboration front, Salesforce will embed Cisco’s Spark platform and WebEx videoconferencing services within its Sales Cloud and Service Cloud through the Salesforce Lightning application development framework. The integration will allow users to communicate in real-time via chat, video, and voice from directly within the Salesforce interface, and without installing a plug-in.
A second joint development effort will tie Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise product, which delivers contact routing, call treatment, computer telephony integration, and multichannel contact management services, with the Salesforce Service Cloud customer service application in a bid to help businesses manage call centers more efficiently.
Cisco and Salesforce will also provide users of the Salesforce IoT Cloud enhanced visibility and control of connected devices using Cisco’s Jasper Internet of Things platform.†The Salesforce IoT Cloud links web-enabled devices to Salesforce, arming companies to collect and act on a variety of real-time insights. Cisco Jasper is designed to help businesses launch, manage, and monetize IoT applications across their lifecycle.
The two vendors expect combining the two services to enable personalized experiences for customers, partners, and employees. A fleet of connected trucks with IoT devices managed by Cisco Jasper, for example, will be able to pass data to the Salesforce IoT Cloud, which can then provide up-to-the-minute delivery status updates and maintenance alerts to the trucks’ owners via the Salesforce CRM solution.
“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,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s IoT and Applications groups in a press statement. “Cisco and Salesforce coming together to form a strategic alliance can eliminate the friction users experience today so they can become more productive.”
“Nothing is more important than making our customers more successful,” said Ryan Aytay, executive vice president of strategic alliances at Salesforce in the same press release. “We’re thrilled to announce this strategic alliance with Cisco, which will simplify the customer experience and empower our mutual customers to be far more productive.”
