IBM and Salesforce are deepening their partnership, with a focus on improving customers with AI agents to help them leverage their data to improve efficiency.

Salesforce recently made headlines with its Agentforce AI agents, with the company saying it “represents the Third Wave of AI” and Agentforce “is what AI was meant to be.” Meanwhile, IBM has a long history developing AI, thanks to its Watson initiative.

Listen to a podcast conversation on the new partnership. How AI Agents leverage data:

The two are partnering to add watsonx capabilities to Agentforce, unlocking even more options for customers who need extra security and regulatory compliance.

By combining Agentforce, Salesforce’s suite of autonomous agents, with capabilities from IBM’s watsonx, the companies will help customers harness the power of agents within the applications they use every day. Leveraging watsonx Orchestrate, IBM will create autonomous agents for Agentforce to help businesses improve productivity, maintain security, and adhere to regulations. IBM customers also will be able to use Slack to engage in conversational experiences with their agents

Integrations planned between Salesforce Data Cloud and IBM Data Gate for watsonx can enable customers to access their business data in IBM Z mainframes and Db2 databases to fuel agents, combined data analysis, and AI workflows across the Agentforce platform.

Additionally, customers will be able to access a wider variety of AI model and deployment options through an integration with IBM watsonx.ai, and will be able to power their new agents using Granite, IBM’s family of foundation models built for business.

Businesses will be able to build custom AI agents via the Agentforce Partner Network. As the companies point out, Agentforce AI agents are a signification improvement over previous generation chatbots with the ability to “reason, understand, and make decisions to help their users perform multi-step tasks based on triggers or chats.”

By combining the power of Agentforce and watsonx Orchestrate, customers will have a new level of business process automation, powered by IBM’s Granite models.

Salesforce and IBM are also helping customers further enhance their data integration strategy, expanding upon their previously announced Zero Copy integration between Salesforce Data Cloud and watsonx.data. Salesforce Zero Copy provides secure, bidirectional integrations with Salesforce Data Cloud so data can be used while remaining in place, without being copied.

Joint customers, beginning with the financial services, insurance, manufacturing, and telecommunications industries, will now be able to use wasonx.data to harness mainframe datasets to power AI use cases on the Salesforce platform — including from IBM Z mainframe databases and files, as well as data from Db2 databases on distributed platforms. This data is synchronized in watsonx.data using IBM Data Gate for watsonx and IBM Data Virtualization Manager for z/OS.

“By deepening our partnership with IBM, we are setting a new standard for enterprise innovation in highly regulated industries. With these new expanded data integration capabilities, we’re transforming how businesses interact with their core systems, while also tapping the power of AI. Together, we are empowering our customers to exceed their strategic objectives by making their data and agents work harder and smarter for them.” – Brian Landsman, Executive Vice President, Global Technology Partners, Salesforce

“Our partnership with Salesforce is about providing customers with unparalleled choice and flexibility in how they leverage AI, beginning with sales and services use cases. By providing joint customers the automation and data integration capabilities they need to build their own agents within the Salesforce Platform, along with access to our trusted Granite models, we are empowering them to deliver meaningful, AI-driven transformation across their organizations.” – Nick Otto, Head of Global Strategic Partnerships, IBM