Salesforce has announced the general availability of Data 360, a critical offering designed to tackle the pervasive challenge of data fragmentation for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). This platform aims to provide the essential, real-time data foundation required to launch powerful, grounded AI solutions, directly addressing the industry's growing demand for Trusted AI. By unifying disparate data sources, Data 360 positions itself as the foundational currency for AI quality, trust, and accountability.
The problem of fragmented data sources, scattered across multiple systems, has long undermined the potential of AI, leading to fragile models and complex, multi-year integration projects. This technical hurdle, coupled with disjointed sales cycles, creates a significant gap in the market for ISVs striving to innovate. Data 360 closes this gap, eliminating the need for high-risk, DIY data infrastructure and replacing it with a simplified, single-contract business model. This strategic shift promises faster time-to-market and immediate revenue capture for partners.
For ISVs, Data 360 fundamentally rewrites the sales playbook, offering a path to accelerated commercial and sales operations. Partners can now bundle and resell Data 360 licenses directly, simplifying the sales cycle and expanding their transaction margins. This embedded licensing model also broadens market reach, enabling ISVs to target companies outside the existing Salesforce ecosystem, accessing entirely new vertical, geographical, and enterprise markets.
Building the Engine for Trusted AI
Customer demands for Generative AI are high, yet concerns about inaccurate, hallucinating, or unsecured data persist. Data 360 directly addresses these fears by acting as the central "connective tissue" in the enterprise, unifying and harmonizing both structured and unstructured data from all critical sources. This includes everything from ERP systems and CRM platforms to customer service transcripts and external market feeds, creating a unified, semantic understanding crucial for building smarter, trustworthy solutions. The platform’s native capabilities for data cleaning and real-time querying eliminate the need for complex custom data pipelines, freeing development teams to focus entirely on core product innovation.
A key technical differentiator is Data 360's Zero-Copy Architecture and federation capabilities, deeply integrating with major data leaders like Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, and AWS. This approach allows ISVs to connect to and utilize massive customer datasets without forcing data migration, drastically reducing management complexity, storage costs, and security risks. Furthermore, ISVs can define their proprietary data models as Data Model Objects (DMOs), unifying them with live customer data to create unique, defensible solutions that competitors cannot easily replicate. This combination of specialized logic and vast data pools forms a significant market moat.
The immediate commercial and technical benefits translate directly into the most crucial long-term outcome: lasting customer trust. Features like AI Audit and Feedback, including toxicity/safety scores and full transcripts, are enabled by Data 360, providing unprecedented transparency and accountability for AI solutions. This ability to tackle complex multi-system data challenges—unifying CRM with HR, ERP, or web telemetry for a single, accurate view—makes an ISV's solution indispensable. According to the announcement, building on Data 360 ensures applications are natively aligned with Salesforce’s future growth, particularly around next-generation Generative AI features, effectively future-proofing the roadmap.
Ultimately, clean, reliable data is the non-negotiable foundation for all AI, and Data 360 powers it all. For Salesforce platform partners, this offering represents a clear path to accelerated revenue, unparalleled product innovation, and enduring customer trust. It fundamentally shifts the partnership from selling a feature to delivering a foundational, market-leading data platform—a prerequisite for all Trusted AI today.
