IBM & Salesforce reveal global AI partnership

IBM and Salesforce are teaming up to deliver joint solutions designed to leverage artificial intelligence.

With the partnership, IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein will connect to enable an entirely new level of intelligent customer engagement across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more.

IBM is also strategically investing in its Global Business Services capabilities for Salesforce with a new practice to help clients rapidly deploy the combined IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein capabilities.

The partnership aims to bring new insights from Watson directly into the Salesforce Intelligent Customer Success Platform, combining deep customer insights from Salesforce Einstein with Watson's structured and unstructured data across many sources and industries.

"Within a few years, every major decision—personal or business—will be made with the help of AI and cognitive technologies," says Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and chief executive officer, IBM.

"This year we expect Watson will touch one billion people—through everything from oncology and retail to tax preparation and cars," she explains.

"Now, with today's announcement, the power of Watson will serve the millions of Salesforce and Einstein customers and developers to provide an unprecedented understanding of customers."

According to Salesforce and IBM, they will integrate IBM Watson APIs into Salesforce - bringing predictive insights from unstructured data inside or outside an enterprise together.

As part of the partnership, IBM will also deploy Salesforce Service Cloud across the company to transform its global product support services and gain a single, unified view of every IBM customer.

"The combination of Einstein and Watson will make businesses smarter and our customers more successful," says Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.

"I'm thrilled to form an alliance with IBM—no company's core values are as close to Salesforce's as IBM's. It's the best of both worlds.