Salesforce expands Data Cloud connectivity with CData partnership

A day after launching its AI Cloud, CRM leader Salesforce is expanding the data layer powering it. The Marc Benioff-led company today announced a partnership with data connectivity provider CData Software to help enterprise teams bring more datasets into their Salesforce Data Cloud instances.

Under the engagement, Salesforce customers will be able to use CData connectors to pull in data from often-siloed, fragmented sources and build richer end-customer profiles for powering the entire Customer 360 suite, right from sales and service to commerce and marketing.

The aim is to ultimately help companies deliver more personalized and connected customer experiences — and gain a competitive advantage in crowded markets.

All CData connectors in Salesforce

Founded in 2016, CData has built a library of over 270 connectors providing access to live data from popular on-premises, SaaS and cloud applications. With this partnership, enterprises using the Salesforce Data Cloud to host unified customer profiles will have this entire library at their disposal to pull in data from any preferred touchpoint.

According to Amit Sharma, co-founder and CEO of CData, customers will be able to use the connectors natively within their Salesforce instance to streamline access to customer data across their tech stack, gaining holistic views of the entire customer journey, enabling advanced analytics and modernizing business processes.

The development could help fill a major gap for Salesforce customers given that even today many of them struggle to connect and unlock value from fragmented data assets spread across a wide collection of data sources and touchpoints.

A natural extension for CData

For CData, on the other side, this is a natural extension of its offerings. Prior to this, the company offered the ability to sync Salesforce data with third-party data platforms or connect data sources to Tableau, the BI and analytics product owned by Salesforce.

“CData has been a vendor for Tableau for several years and has enhanced Tableau’s ability to integrate with the data sources customers care about, so integrating CData connectors with Salesforce Data Cloud just made sense,” Chandrika Shankarnarayan, VP for product at Salesforce Data Cloud, said. 

“CData Connectors will increase our data connectivity options for customers using Data Cloud,” she added.

Since 2016, CData claims to have seen over 40% YoY growth in revenue with “thousands of organizations” relying on its platform, from SMEs to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises. The company has also raised $160 million across multiple rounds.

“Leading vendors across almost every facet of data management embed our high-performance connectivity to solve their data access and integration challenges. We continue to expand that connectivity, bringing our services to one of the most popular platforms for businesses worldwide to improve our customers’ ability to access and action their disparate data to produce truly exceptional customer experiences,” Sharma noted.