Salesforce and AWS expand global strategic alliance

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, and Salesforce, the customer relationship management (CRM) provider, have announced new product integrations that will simplify how customers can securely share and synchronise data across AWS and Salesforce services. The new capabilities demonstrate the companies’ continued investment in delivering deeper levels of integration between AWS and the Salesforce Lightning Platform.

Salesforce is now live on AWS in Australia, and customers can access the Salesforce Customer Success Platform on the AWS Asia-Pacific (Sydney) Region – this development is one of Salesforce’s first international infrastructure expansions supported with AWS cloud services. Salesforce is set to further accelerate its growth with new locally-based instances as an option for its core services. 

As part of the next phase of their global strategic alliance, AWS and Salesforce will deliver the following integrations and a secure, trusted framework for connecting the Salesforce Platform with AWS PrivateLink and Amazon Connect: 

AWS PrivateLink integration with Salesforce APIs

AWS PrivateLink will allow software-as-a-service (SaaS) application developers who build on AWS to offer private endpoints as an additional option for accessing their service. This integration will provide endpoints for core Salesforce application programming interfaces (APIs) within the developers’ Amazon virtual private clouds (VPCs) and vice versa. 

Exposure to Internet threats is reduced by using a dedicated AWS network connection, which privately routes all traffic flowing between Salesforce and AWS services on a dedicated Amazon network connection rather than the public Internet. 

AWS integration with Salesforce Platform Events

Customers are increasingly building event-driven architectures that trigger processes in AWS based on data changes in Salesforce, and vice versa. As part of this announcement, AWS and Salesforce will collaborate on a new solution that will enable mutual customers to publish and subscribe to Salesforce Platform Events in AWS with ease. 

Events in Salesforce, such as the creation of a sales opportunity, can then easily trigger actions in AWS Lambda and other AWS products. Once processing is complete, results will publish back to Salesforce as Platform Events. For example, enterprises who are managing fleets of connected devices on AWS would be able to leverage usage data to alert sales, service, and marketing teams who are using Salesforce, so they can proactively resolve customer incidents, generate sales leads, and cross-sell new services. 

AWS integration with Salesforce Platform Events will be available in 2019.

Integration with Amazon Connect for Salesforce Service Cloud

Today, companies can leverage Amazon Connect, a self-service, cloud-based contact centre service, together with Salesforce Service Cloud to deliver capabilities that support customer workflows between three contact centre technologies – interactive voice response (IVR), automatic call distributor (ACD), and CRM. 

Expanding on this integration, Amazon Connect for Salesforce Service Cloud will enable customers to build artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, self-service voice experiences with a Lightning-integrated agent and customer community. This may include prebuilt data and omnichannel integration, support for bots, and AI built with Amazon Lex and Salesforce Einstein. 

Amazon Connect for Salesforce Service Cloud is now available and mutual customers can install the Amazon Connect CTI Adapter on the AppExchange.

“Salesforce's growing strategic relationship with AWS is fuelled by a shared commitment to customer success," said Bret Taylor, President and Chief Product Officer, Salesforce. "Our newest integrations will empower CIOs to securely share and synchronise data across two of the world's most trusted cloud platforms to accelerate their digital transformation.”

“Because of the deep relationship between AWS and Salesforce – Salesforce runs the vast majority of their public cloud workloads in AWS, and Amazon relies upon Salesforce across various businesses to enhance customer relationships – we have a unique ability to integrate our services and provide customers with enhanced solutions,” said Matt Garman, Vice President, AWS Compute Services. Many Salesforce services, including Heroku, Quip and Marketing Cloud Social Studio, also run on AWS infrastructure.

“These new integrations will enable companies to leverage the full power of both platforms, driving innovation and building intelligent, connected customer experiences.”

Intuit is a business and financial software company that develops and sells financial, accounting, and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants, and individuals. 

“With the seamless integration between Amazon Connect and Salesforce, we’re unleashing the power of technology to customise the agent experience through data,” said Loren Lacy, Group Product Manager, Customer Success and Sales Technology, Intuit. 

“We’re improving productivity and allowing them to focus on customers, not their tools, to provide the best possible customer experience."

Autodesk, a software developer for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, and entertainment industries relies extensively on Salesforce to manage their customer experience and account-based selling and marketing. 

“The integration of Salesforce with cloud services from AWS helps us know our customers better. We are excited about new integrations that will empower our teams who interact with customers with the information they need, when they need it,” said Tzvetana Duffy, Director of Data and Automation at Autodesk.