In the Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms 2024, Gartner evaluated 18 vendors, and among them was Salesforce Data Cloud which clinched the position as a leader. 

It was unveiled at Dreamforce 2022 as Salesforce’s new real-time data platform, Genie. The company later rebranded it as Data Cloud, launching it officially in 2023.

At TrailblazerDX 2024, Salesforce’s developer conference in San Francisco, co-founder Parker Harris introduced the audience to Muralidhar Krishnaprasad as the genius behind Data Cloud.

Krishnaprasad, also called MK by his colleagues, has been with Salesforce for over five years and currently serves as the EVP of software engineering. At the event, referring to a report, Krishnaprasad said that 81% of IT leaders are of the opinion that data silos hinder their AI and digital transformation, and this is why Salesforce came up with Data Cloud.

“We built Data Cloud to help you unlock all the trapped data and bring it into our ecosystem so that you can use it in your line of work,” he said.

Demand for Salesforce Data Cloud 

Data Cloud allows Salesforce customers to bring their sales, marketing, and real-time web engagement data, besides data stored in Snowflake and DataBricks, etc. But most importantly, they can add Salesforce’s metadata to it. 

On the sidelines of TrailblazerDX, in an exclusive interaction with AIM, Krishnaprasad said that Data Cloud is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing, organic innovation to come out of Salesforce.

In the Q4 earnings call, the company revealed that Data Cloud is approaching USD 400 million in ARR, growing at nearly 90% year over year. “In fact, we are approaching half a billion dollars in two years and this is because Data Cloud bridges the gap between IT and the business,” Krishnaprasad said.

However, Salesforce’s endeavours to create a unified data platform are not new. The CRM leader has played around with sales and service cloud and has tried to use MuleSoft to integrate silos of data, but all past efforts have not been as successful as Data Cloud.

To enable access to data across multiple platforms without the need for data migration, Salesforce collaborated with DataBricks and hyperscalers as part of its Data Cloud initiative. This enabled Salesforce customers to access their data sitting on those platforms on Data Cloud, without the necessity to move them.

“It acts as a bridge allowing businesses to access and harmonise their existing data seamlessly. Whether you choose to ingest or federate your data, Data Cloud ensures that it’s unified and available for use across all platforms,” Krishnaprasad added.

Here, it is important to note that despite having over 150,000 customers globally, Data Cloud’s adoption has been limited to reportedly just over 1,000 customers.

The half-a-billion dollar figure projected by Krishnaprasad could be because those adopting Data Cloud are also Salesforce’s largest customers. 

Nonetheless, with Salesforce now throwing AI into the mix, its customers will be able to run AI models on their data to derive value. Recently, Salesforce also rebranded its low-code platform Einstein Studio, which was introduced last September. Now called Einstein 1 Studio, it offers newer capabilities and is bundled with Data Cloud at no additional cost. 

Data Cloud Adoption in India 

At TrailblazerDX, Salesforce emphasised the significance of fostering trust in AI to encourage broader adoption of AI tools among enterprises. With the introduction of Data Cloud, Salesforce encourages enterprises to centralise all their data within the Salesforce platform. 

However, the integration of AI raises pertinent concerns regarding data security and privacy.

According to Krishnaprasad, Data Cloud has seen good adoption among Salesforce’s customers globally as well as in India. Non-banking financial giant Bajaj Finance, which has a customer base of 73 million and holds assets under management worth INR 270,050 crore, is also leveraging Data Cloud.

It helped them consolidate the data that was sitting in different places. They accomplished this on a large scale, allowing marketers and others to create segments and target customers for loans and upselling. 

“Especially during festivals like Diwali, where they reportedly process millions of loans per hour. This level of operation necessitates accurate data. Consequently, they have succeeded in gathering data from across the enterprise, consolidating it in the Data Cloud, harmonising it, and allowing different departments to analyse it in distinct ways,” Krishnaprasad said.

He pointed out that Air India is yet another Indian company that has truly transformed its business operations with the Data Cloud. “They brought all their data to the Data Cloud and have grand plans to go even broader.”

Data Cloud is Not Just for Large Enterprises 

While Data Cloud has seen good adoption among Salesforce’s large enterprise customers, Krishnaprasad argues that it is also very useful for smaller businesses. 

“If you look at it, the starter version we shipped with marketing cloud has Data Cloud built at scale. So we have scaled it down to horizontal as well,” he added.

Moreover, Krishnaprasad believes that not only Salesforce’s services are competitively priced, it allows small businesses to scale easily, as they make their journey from small businesses to large enterprises.