Salesforce and IBM are expanding their partnership on AI development, providing businesses with greater flexibility and control over how they leverage AI and data for customer relationship management (CRM). As a result, businesses should be able to make data-driven decisions and automate tasks directly within their workflows.
According to a press release, IBM’s powerful Granite series of Large Language Models (LLM) will be making it to Salesforce Einstein 1, the company’s AI platform.
Businesses looking to deploy generative AI into their best CRM software need access to the best LLMs suited for specific business needs, Salesforce says. Hence, the company developed a Bring Your Own Large Language Model strategy through which Salesforce Einstein 1 users get to pick which LLMs to integrate. Now, IBM’s Granite series of AI models as well as watsonx customer-built LLMs will be making it into the platform as well.
Joining Zero Copy
Besides getting a wider variety of LLMs to choose from, businesses will also get pre-built templates and actions tailored for various industries, such as the public sector, automotive, or finance. This will reduce development time and effort for businesses looking to deploy AI for CRM use cases.
Finally, IBM announced joining Salesforce’s Zero Copy Partner Network, a global ecosystem of technology and solution providers building secure, bidirectional zero copy integrations with Salesforce Data Cloud. As a result, data can be actioned across the Salesforce Einstein 1 Platform.
Customers accessing their IBM data via watsonx.data from within Salesforce Data Cloud will be doing so in a “zero copy” pattern, which should simplify security management, and minimize security risks when exposing data to the business, the company concluded.
“Zero copy enables businesses to keep their data in its original location while accessing external data from Salesforce Data Cloud to create a comprehensive view of the customer”, Salesforce explained in the press release. “This reduces the need for companies to rely on custom integrations and complex data pipelines to integrate and move data to Salesforce from external data warehouses and vice versa.”
