At its TrailheaDX 2018 developer conference last week, Salesforce.com unveiled its new Integration Cloud, a solution that promises to more efficiently bring together systems, devices, and various data sources in an effort to ultimately improve customer experience. Salesforce also debuted its Lightning Flow tool, which aims to eliminate much of the friction associated with process automation.
These announcements came just days after the company announced its intention to acquire integration software company MuleSoft for $6.5 billion. "As we were listening to CEOs, the whole notion of integration and data kept coming up over and over again. They are so frustrated that they can't unlock data from their legacy systems. That is the strategic nature of why we are acquiring MuleSoft," Salesforce president and COO Keith Block told The Wall Street Journal.
Though MuleSoft's massive price tag earned Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff some criticism from industry experts, Salesforce is known for big acquisitions and typically uses the new technology to speed up innovation. Plus, the company is already taking steps to demonstrate its commitment to improving integration solutions, which MuleSoft's technology will continue to help them do.
“This is precisely why it makes so much sense for Salesforce to buy a company that does what Mulesoft does: [It allows] disparate applications to interconnect via APIs [application programming interfaces] and thereby give business customers the ability to find, manage, analyze, and act upon all of their data, regardless of its IT classification or pedigree or location,” Bob Evans, CEO of Evans Strategic Communications, wrote in a blog post for Forbes.
At TrailheaDX, Salesforce made other announcements to underscore its emphasis on not only integration but also the addition of artificial intelligence to applications. For example, the company introduced Einstein Analytics, which uses artificial intelligence to power in-app decision making. Salesforce also rolled out Quip Live Apps, which enables its partners such as Altify, draw.io, and Vidyard to deliver interactive applications.