WEBVTT

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Pat, I really want to thank
you for being here today.

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I want to start by looking back

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at kind of the last 18 months

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and ultimately some of the
changes that have happened

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within the value proposition
of a CRM platform,

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you know, going from
an end-to-end solution

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across UI workflow system of record

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into something that's a
little bit more unpacked,

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you know, how do you see
organizations preparing for this,

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and what does it mean for Salesforce?

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It certainly has been an
unbelievable 18 months,

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very, very dynamic.

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I think in short, to answer your question,

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the monolith is dead.

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Long live the mesh.

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So what we see with a lot of the customers

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with whom we partner is this
desire for their AI agents

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to work where work actually happens.

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Based on our experience,

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you don't really see CIOs or customers

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kind of blowing away
their entire architecture.

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Instead, what they're doing

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is they're putting an agentic layer

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on top of an existing stack.

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And the interesting thing with that is,

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is the true value there?

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It's not really at the system of record,

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it's at the system of action.

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The CIOs, the customers who
will win over the next decade,

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are those who are really transforming

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for agent readiness today.

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Clean data,

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federated identity, kind of
agent orchestration layer

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that I mentioned across
the entire ecosystem,

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not just kind of the four
walls of one particular vendor.

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I think that's very wise,

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and ultimately when we
start to think about,

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you know, CIOs or again technology leaders

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that are making decisions,

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like how do you see them

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either doubling down on specific vendors

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or leaving themselves open

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for more flexibility
in their architecture?

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I think a simple heuristic
that I use there is,

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and you used the word double down.

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Double down maybe where
differentiation lives

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and remain flexible
where commodity resides.

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So let's say customer experience,

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if that's your competitive differentiator,

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which in most industries
that is in fact the case,

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that's absolutely where you need to go

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and double or triple down in
kind of deep platform bets.

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So deep data, deep integration,

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deep kind of agentic intelligence

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that is specific or
tailored to your industry.

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And what we see on the
infrastructure side,

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you know, AI infrastructure,
orchestration infrastructure,

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integration middleware,

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kind of simple AI models that summarize

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or that classify information,

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you know, that's where you
want to keep your options open.

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That is a commodity business

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and then the prices will
continue to fall there.

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Well, and to extend on that point,

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I think we're seeing a point
where there's a lot of emphasis

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and focus on moving fast on the AI agenda,

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but a lot of leaders in the industry

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are worried about regulation,

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rising costs, vendor lock-in.

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What are you seeing successful ones do

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to be able to drive to value quickly

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but also take into consideration

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some of these very real challenges?

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Yeah, so the tension
there is definitely real.

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It might be a false dilemma,

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let's see if I get this right,

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speed without governance,
that's basically technical debt

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speed without governance,
that's basically technical debt

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with better marketing.

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And then governance without speed,

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if that happens,

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then you're in an environment

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where your competitor is going in

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and already talking to
your individual customers,

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they're taking your customers for you.

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So you've got to go in, you've got to find

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kind of a happy medium there.

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On the costing side of things,

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what we've seen in this agentic world

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is that the cost

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is not necessarily, the cost concerns

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or cost uncertainty is not
necessarily with licenses,

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AI licenses or other software licenses,

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it's token sprawl.

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So you go in and it's a
poorly structured prompt.

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You know, you're going in,

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you're retrieving a bunch of data,

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duplicate agents as well,

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that little machine,
that adds up over time.

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And really what we've seen with most CIOs

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is that they want visibility
into that proactively

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rather than retroactively
when the cloud bill arrives.

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On the vendor lock-in thing,

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you know, I think some
vendor lock-in is rational.

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And what we've seen with a lot of CIOs,

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a lot of customers as well

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is that those that are successful

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aren't reluctant to commit,

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but they commit intentionally.

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They know what they're buying,

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they know how much it costs,

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they know how to get out of it as well.

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And we really think that
those are the types of CIOs,

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those are the companies,

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that'll be most successful
over the next decade.

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Well Pat, I really appreciate
your time and insight.

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Thank you, appreciate it.

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(bright music)