Cisco, Salesforce Announce Cloud Integration
September 22 2016 - 11:00AM
Dow Jones News
Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. and software company
Salesforce.com Inc. said Thursday they would jointly develop and
market products that use each other's offerings, as both companies
work to build their cloud businesses in an increasingly competitive
field.
Cisco and Salesforce plan to work together to integrate their
platforms focused on, among other things, customer service and the
internet-of-things, a nascent field connecting everyday items, such
as lightbulbs, to the web.
Cisco said the move would "eliminate the friction users
experience today," and Salesforce said it would "simplify the
customer experience."
Examples of the collaboration between Cisco and Salesforce
include customers being able to communicate over chat or video
without having to toggle between apps, as well as a fleet of
Cisco-connected trucks being able to pass data to the Salesforce
cloud.
Providers of cloud services are faced with a balance between
opening up their services and making it easier to integrate with
competitors products, while also siloing their services to keep
tight hold on their current subscribers and their data.
The integration deal is the latest collaboration between
potential competitors in the increasingly crowded cloud-services
field, which includes offerings from Microsoft Corp., Alphabet
Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Oracle Corp.
For Cisco, its users are increasingly using cloud services like
those offered by Amazon, instead of in-house data and computing
centers built with Cisco's hardware. In response, Cisco has adopted
a strategy of acting as an intermediary between companies and
operators of such services, instead of offering its own on-demand
computing over the internet.
The agreement announced Thursday also comes a year after Cisco
hired a Salesforce executive to be its chief digital officer.
For Salesforce, the integration is notable for not being an
acquisition. This summer, Salesforce lost a bidding war for
LinkedIn Corp. to Microsoft, and it has been ramping up its buying
activity. In June, the company said it would buy e-commerce
platform Demandware Inc. for $2.8 billion, its largest deal
to-date.
In addition, Salesforce is facing increasing pressure from
Oracle, which reported a 59% increase in total cloud revenue in its
most recent quarter and is aggressively pushing further into the
cloud business.
Shares of Salesforce rose 1% to $74.94 in morning trading in New
York, as Cisco shares added 0.5% to $31.53.
Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 22, 2016 10:45 ET (14:45 GMT)
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