At the Agentforce World Tour in Singapore, Salesforce presented their vision for Agentic AI – showcasing how they’re helping customers stay ahead of rapid technological change and unlock stronger business outcomes with speed, trust, and agility.
Ecosystm Advisors, Ullrich Loeffler, Sash Mukherjee, Achim Granzen, and Manish Goenka share their take on Salesforce’s announcements, demos, and messaging, highlighting what resonated, what stood out, and what it means for the future.
Click here to download “Agentforce World Tour: Highlights from Singapore” as a PDF.
What truly stood out in Salesforce’s messaging?
ULLRICH LOEFFLER, CEO & Co-Founder
What stood out at the Salesforce event was their pragmatic, integrated approach to scaling AI. They made it clear AI isn’t plug-and-play, emphasising the complexity and cost involved in what they call ‘self-plumbing’ AI – spanning infrastructure, data management, model development, governance, and application integration. Their answer is a unified platform that lowers costs, accelerates time to market, and reduces risk by removing the need to manage multiple disconnected tools. This seamless environment tackles the real challenge of building and running a layered AI stack.
Equally notable is their view of Agentic AI as a capability refined through iteration, not a sudden overhaul. By urging businesses to start with the right use cases for faster adoption, less disruption, and tangible impact, they show a realistic grasp of enterprise change.
Salesforce offers a clear, practical path to AI: simplifying complexity through integration and driving adoption with measured, value-focused steps.
SASH MUKHERJEE, VP Industry Insights
What truly stood out at the Salesforce event was their unwavering commitment to Trust. They understand that AI agents are only as reliable as the data they use, and they’ve built their platform to address this head-on. Salesforce emphasises that building trusted AI means more than just powerful models; it requires a secure and well-governed data foundation. They highlighted how their platform, with 25 years of embedded security, ensures data resilience, protects sensitive information during development and testing, and provides robust visibility into how AI interacts with your data.
A key assurance is their Trust Layer, a unique innovation that safeguards your data when interacting with AI models. This layer automatically masks sensitive data, ensures zero data retention by LLM providers, and detects harmful language. This means organisations can leverage GenAI’s power without compromising sensitive information.
Ultimately, Salesforce is empowering organisations to confidently deploy AI by making trust non-negotiable, ensuring organisational data is used responsibly and securely to drive real business value.
How does Salesforce differentiate their approach to Agentic AI?
ACHIM GRANZEN, Principal Advisor
Salesforce’s focus on Agentic AI focus stands out for its clarity and depth. The Agentforce platform takes centre stage, demonstrating how clients can now build Agentic AI with little or no code and deploy agents seamlessly across the Salesforce environment.
But beyond the polished demos and compelling customer stories, the most critical takeaway risked being overlooked: Agentforce is not a standalone capability. It’s tightly integrated with Data Cloud and the broader Salesforce platform. That layered architecture is more than just a technical decision; it’s what ensures every AI agent is governed, auditable, and constrained to what’s been provisioned in Data Cloud. It’s the foundational safeguard that makes Agentic AI viable in the enterprise.
And that’s the message that needs greater emphasis. As organisations move from experimentation to real-world deployment, trust and control become just as vital as ease of use. Salesforce’s architecture delivers both – and that balance is a key differentiator in the crowded enterprise AI space.
MANISH GOENKA, Principal Advisor
Salesforce has moved beyond passive AI assistance to autonomous agents that can take meaningful action within trusted boundaries. Rather than focusing solely on chat-based copilots, Salesforce emphasises intelligent agents embedded into business workflows, capable of executing tasks like claims processing or personalised service without human intervention.
What sets Salesforce apart is how deeply this vision is integrated into their platform. With Einstein Copilot and Copilot Studio, customers can build their own cross-system agents, not just those limited to Salesforce apps. And by enabling partners to create and monetise agents via AppExchange, Salesforce is building a full-fledged AI ecosystem, positioning themselves as a platform for enterprise AI, not just a CRM.
Trust is a cornerstone of this approach. Salesforce’s focus on governance, auditability, and ethical AI ensures that Agentic AI is not only powerful, but also secure and accountable – key concerns as agents become more autonomous.
In a crowded AI space, Salesforce stands out by offering a grounded, scalable vision of Agentic AI, anchored in real use cases, platform extensibility, and responsible innovation.
Where are Salesforce’s biggest growth opportunities in APAC?
MANISH GOENKA
Salesforce has significant growth opportunities across Asia Pacific, with Singapore playing a pivotal role in its regional strategy. The company’s USD 1 billion investment and the launch of their first overseas AI research hub firmly position Singapore as more than just a sales market. It becomes a core engine for product innovation and a key driver of Salesforce’s long-term AI leadership.
Across the region, public sector transformation and SME digitisation represent major areas of opportunity. Salesforce’s secure and compliant Government Cloud is well suited to support Smart Nation goals and modernise public digital services. At the same time, governments are actively pushing SME digitisation, creating demand for scalable, modular platforms that can grow from basic CRM solutions to AI-enabled automation.
Sustainability is also emerging as a strong growth vector. As ESG reporting becomes commonplace in more markets, tools like Net Zero Cloud are well positioned to help businesses meet compliance requirements and improve data transparency.
Finally, the rapidly expanding ecosystem of certified professionals and ISV partners across Asia Pacific is enabling faster, more localised implementations. This grounds Salesforce’s capabilities in local context, accelerating time to value and delivering business outcomes that are tailored to the region’s diverse needs.
What does the Informatica acquisition mean for Salesforce’s AI strategy?
ACHIM GRANZEN
The planned acquisition of Informatica is a strategically important move that completes Salesforce’s Agentforce narrative. At the World Tour, Agentforce was positioned as the future of enterprise AI, allowing organisations to build and deploy autonomous agents across the Salesforce ecosystem. But some lingering concerns remained around how deeply Data Cloud could handle governance, especially as AI agents begin making decisions and executing tasks without human oversight.
Informatica answers that question. With proven tools for data quality, lineage, and policy enforcement, Informatica brings a level of governance maturity that complements Salesforce’s ambition. Its integration into Data Cloud strengthens the trust layer that underpins Agentforce and reinforces Salesforce’s positioning as an enterprise-grade AI platform.
Of course, there are broader implications too. Salesforce will gain access to Informatica’s installed base, potentially opening up cross-sell opportunities. And there are questions to resolve, such as how Informatica will operate as a product line within the larger Salesforce ecosystem.
But the core value of the deal is clear: by bringing Informatica’s governance expertise into the fold, Salesforce can significantly accelerate its ability to deliver trusted, production-ready AI at scale. From a risk and compliance standpoint, that governance capability may prove to be the most valuable part of the acquisition.
What will define Salesforce’s next chapter of growth in APAC?
SASH MUKHERJEE
Just as Salesforce is driving an integrated enterprise platform from the CRM and customer experience lens, competitors (and partners) are taking a similar platform-centric approach from other functional vantage points – whether it’s HR (like Workday), Finance (like Oracle), or IT (like ServiceNow). In fast-growing, cost-sensitive markets across APAC, competing on price alone won’t be sustainable, especially with strong regional players offering leaner, localised alternatives.
To win, Salesforce must adopt a nuanced strategy that goes beyond product breadth. This means addressing local economic realities – offering right-sized solutions for businesses at different stages of digital maturity – while consistently reinforcing the long-term value, resilience, and global standards that set Salesforce apart. Their differentiators in data security, compliance, and ecosystem depth must be positioned not as add-ons, but as essential foundations for future-ready growth.
More flexible entry points – whether modular offerings, usage-based pricing, or vertical-specific bundles – can reduce friction and make the platform more accessible. At the same time, strengthening local partnerships with ISVs, system integrators, and government bodies can help tailor offerings to market-specific needs, ensuring relevance and faster implementation.
Ultimately, Salesforce’s growth across APAC will depend on their ability to balance global strengths with local agility.
ULLRICH LOEFFLER
Salesforce is well positioned to lead in AI-driven transformation, but doing so will require evolving their sales approach to match the complexity and expectations of today’s enterprise buyers. With a strong foundation selling to marketing and customer leaders, the company now has an opportunity to deepen engagement with CIOs and CTOs, reframing themselves not just as a CRM provider, but as a full-spectrum enterprise platform.
Traditional sales reps who excel at pitching features to business users are no longer enough. Selling AI – particularly agentic, autonomous AI – demands sales professionals who can link technical capabilities to strategic outcomes and lead conversations around risk, compliance, and long-term value.
To sustain their leadership, Salesforce will need to invest in a new generation of sales talent: domain-fluent, consultative, and able to navigate complex, cross-functional buying journeys.
As tech providers such as Microsoft enhance their capabilities and products, they will impact business processes and technology skills, and influence other tech providers to reshape their product and service offerings. Microsoft recently organised briefing sessions in Sydney and Singapore, to present their future roadmap, with a focus on their AI capabilities.
Ecosystm Advisors Achim Granzen, Peter Carr, and Tim Sheedy provide insights on Microsoft’s recent announcements and messaging.
Click here to download Ecosystm VendorSphere: Microsoft’s AI Vision – Initiatives & Impact
Ecosystm Question: What are your thoughts on Microsoft Copilot?
Tim Sheedy. The future of GenAI will not be about single LLMs getting bigger and better – it will be about the use of multiple large and small language models working together to solve specific challenges. It is wasteful to use a large and complex LLM to solve a problem that is simpler. Getting these models to work together will be key to solving industry and use case specific business and customer challenges in the future. Microsoft is already doing this with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Achim Granzen. Microsoft’s Copilot – a shrink-wrapped GenAI tool based on OpenAI – has become a mainstream product. Microsoft has made it available to their enterprise clients in multiple ways: for personal productivity in Microsoft 365, for enterprise applications in Dynamics 365, for developers in Github and Copilot Studio, and to partners to integrate Copilot into their applications suites (E.g. Amdocs’ Customer Engagement Platform).
Ecosystm Question: How, in your opinion, is the Microsoft Copilot a game changer?
Microsoft’s Customer Copyright Commitment, initially launched as Copilot Copyright Commitment, is the true game changer.
Achim Granzen. It safeguards Copilot users from potential copyright infringement lawsuits related to data used for algorithm training or output results. In November 2023, Microsoft expanded its scope to cover commercial usage of their OpenAI interface as well.
This move not only protects commercial clients using Microsoft’s GenAI products but also extends to any GenAI solutions built by their clients. This initiative significantly reduces a key risk associated with GenAI adoption, outlined in the product terms and conditions.
However, compliance with a set of Required Mitigations and Codes of Conduct is necessary for clients to benefit from this commitment, aligning with responsible AI guidelines and best practices.
Ecosystm Question: Where will organisations need most help on their AI journeys?
Peter Carr. Unfortunately, there is no playbook for AI.
- The path to integrating AI into business strategies and operations lacks a one-size-fits-all guide. Organisations will have to navigate uncharted territories for the time being. This means experimenting with AI applications and learning from successes and failures. This exploratory approach is crucial for leveraging AI’s potential while adapting to unique organisational challenges and opportunities. So, companies that are better at agile innovation will do better in the short term.
- The effectiveness of AI is deeply tied to the availability and quality of connected data. AI systems require extensive datasets to learn and make informed decisions. Ensuring data is accessible, clean, and integrated is fundamental for AI to accurately analyse trends, predict outcomes, and drive intelligent automation across various applications.
Ecosystm Question: What advice would you give organisations adopting AI?
Tim Sheedy. It is all about opportunities and responsibility.
- There is a strong need for responsible AI – at a global level, at a country level, at an industry level and at an organisational level. Microsoft (and other AI leaders) are helping to create responsible AI systems that are fair, reliable, safe, private, secure, and inclusive. There is still a long way to go, but these capabilities do not completely indemnify users of AI. They still have a responsibility to set guardrails in their own businesses about the use and opportunities for AI.
- AI and hybrid work are often discussed as different trends in the market, with different solution sets. But in reality, they are deeply linked. AI can help enhance and improve hybrid work in businesses – and is a great opportunity to demonstrate the value of AI and tools such as Copilot.
Ecosystm Question: What should Microsoft focus on?
Tim Sheedy. Microsoft faces a challenge in educating the market about adopting AI, especially Copilot. They need to educate business, IT, and AI users on embracing AI effectively. Additionally, they must educate existing partners and find new AI partners to drive change in their client base. Success in the race for knowledge workers requires not only being first but also helping users maximise solutions. Customers have limited visibility of Copilot’s capabilities, today. Improving customer upskilling and enhancing tools to prompt users to leverage capabilities will contribute to Microsoft’s (or their competitors’) success in dominating the AI tool market.
Peter Carr. Grassroots businesses form the economic foundation of the Asia Pacific economies. Typically, these businesses do not engage with global SIs (GSIs), which drive Microsoft’s new service offerings. This leads to an adoption gap in the sector that could benefit most from operational efficiencies. To bridge this gap, Microsoft must empower non-GSI partners and managed service providers (MSPs) at the local and regional levels. They won’t achieve their goal of democratising AI, unless they do. Microsoft has the potential to advance AI technology while ensuring fair and widespread adoption.