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Summary
In the age of agentic artificial intelligence (AI), Salesforce stands at a pivotal crossroads. By evolving from platform provider to enterprise orchestrator, the vendor is well positioned to establish a leadership position in the $264 billion AI software market. The future here will belong to those vendors that don’t just offer platforms but orchestrate intelligence across the entire enterprise.
Salesforce and other platform providers are at a strategic crossroads
At the London leg of its recent Agentforce World Tour event series, Salesforce presented a series of captivating demos on how AI will advance various business tasks and use cases. One such demo involved recruitment, where an AI agent listened, reasoned, and responded to a candidate call like a seasoned recruiter. The agent pulled data and insights seamlessly from multiple backend systems, asked clarifying questions, and scheduled the next steps, all in real time and without human escalation. This was a step forward from the conversational AI use cases we have seen so much of over the past few years—it was intelligent, contextual, and autonomous. Digital labor in action is powered by agentic AI capabilities. It was a compelling showcase of where work is heading and how one of the world’s largest enterprise software vendors is positioning itself to try and lead.
Agentic AI is riding a major wave of hype, with new features and functionality emerging on what seems like a daily basis. However, the broader shift confronting every enterprise tech vendor is whether platform models built for cloud-centric workflows can evolve fast enough to support a future where so much value is created by AI agents acting across the enterprise—and often beyond the domain of a single vendor. Vendors that fail to evolve risk becoming siloed and sidelined. As AI agents become the new interface for how work is done, control over user experience, automation logic, and business outcomes will move away from legacy platforms unless they actively reposition themselves. History has shown us that platform transitions do not reward incumbency; they reward agility and adaptability. The winners of the last major shift from on-premises to cloud were those that moved quickly, redefined their value proposition, and embraced openness. The move to agentic AI will be no different.
Salesforce has moved quickly and visibly into the agentic AI space
Agentforce, Salesforce’s Agentic AI solution, is already delivering value and proof points of its long-term potential across multiple use cases. At the event, Salesforce shared how Agentforce is delivering real-time support at Heathrow, how RBC has benefited from 30,000 AI-generated sales leads, and how Capita is shortening recruitment cycles from weeks to days. Collectively, Agentforce is being applied in a compelling fashion and at scale. One of the key values of the Salesforce proposition here is in how it builds on Salesforce’s core strengths, notably its unified metadata, extensible APIs, and a massive app ecosystem. And Salesforce’s AI proposition is not just a bolt-on capability: the vendor’s technical vision is sound, and its composable platform ecosystem play highlights Salesforce’s strategic commitment and meaningful investment in AI. At Omdia, we are tracking the AI platform proposition closely, and already we have seen:
- AI-augmented support reaching 30-40% task coverage in certain enterprise environments
- Over 20% of workflows becoming enhanced with AI and year-over-year AI ACV growth reported by some enterprise platforms
- A forecast of $264 billion AI software market across the consumer, enterprise, and government sectors by 2029
The agentic AI model is gaining massive traction, and Salesforce has an influential voice in the conversation. However, maintaining a strong position in this rapidly evolving space will require more than just new features or technical execution. The gravitational pull in Salesforce’s offering will be its platform-centric capabilities and vision. Platform-based architecture gathered momentum in the cloud era as solutions, including Salesforce, connect teams from sales, service, marketing, analytics, and more via different apps and a unified experience and data foundation.
However, in the agentic AI era, the end goal is different. Businesses are no longer investing in platforms just to standardize user interfaces or unify workflows across applications. The value going forward will lie in orchestrating outcomes across teams, systems, and data—regardless of where the work begins or which app owns it. That is where the competitive playing field is shifting. Enterprise buyers want agents that can seamlessly integrate across their app ecosystems. This is the opportunity that lies before platform vendors such as Salesforce. It is built around not just owning or orchestrating workflows but ensuring businesses are getting value from them. Salesforce has the potential to lead in this space, and doing so will require the vendor to extend the value of Agentforce across more cross-functional domains. The platform already spans far beyond traditional CRM workflows, and its foundation in rich, contextual customer data provides a critical advantage, enabling AI agents to reduce hallucinations, improve accuracy, and drive more reliable outcomes. The fastest time-to-value is emerging in Sales and Service, where agents are now executing lower-level tasks autonomously. However, the real opportunity lies in scaling these capabilities across operations, HR, finance, and the full breadth of the Salesforce application suite.
Agentforce 3 marks a major step forward in Salesforce’s agentic AI ambitions
In June 2025, Salesforce formally introduced Agentforce 3—a big step forward for the vendor in its agentic AI ambitions relating to employee support and beyond. Agentforce 3 was developed to more seamlessly integrate human and AI workforces. This is a new form of hybrid work based not on location but on embracing how humans and AI agents can work side by side, enabling businesses to scale AI adoption while maintaining human oversight. As part of this release, the introduction of the Agentforce Command Center is notable given the recent movements from competitive vendors in the area of AI agent management and observability. Agentforce Command Center enables businesses to monitor, measure, and optimize AI agents. In addition to tracking agent performance against strategic KPIs and delivering real-time insights into agent health, Command Center will also enable businesses to drill down into individual interactions to identify improvement opportunities. This level of observability ensures businesses can trust and refine their AI agents.
The native Model Context Protocol (MCP) support is also encouraging, as this will help Salesforce create a more open orchestration ecosystem and allow customers to connect agents across different internal and external systems. MCP, coupled with observability (via Command Center), means Agentforce is now positioned more as a central nervous system for business AI agents.
Salesforce also announced a new dual pricing model. The consumption-based option lowers the barrier to entry, allowing teams to test and scale agents with minimal risk. For employee-facing use cases, Salesforce also offers an unlimited-use license designed for enterprises looking to drive broader, cross-functional deployment of AI agent capabilities across the organization.
With the market around AI agent observability and orchestration heating up, what must Salesforce do to win?
The race for dominance in agent orchestration and observability is well underway. Agentforce Command Center is the latest in a range of AI orchestration and observability tools released in 2025. The “winners” in this area will be those vendors that can embed these AI orchestration capabilities deeply into the operational fabric of modern businesses. This means getting deep into the cross-functional workflows that guide how people get work done. Additionally, supporting governance and trust framework at scale; enabling interoperability across tools, agents, and model vendors; and tying agent activity to clear business outcomes will also be vital. The major platform players will want to win in this market due to the revenue potential. As noted, Omdia forecasts the AI software market across the consumer, enterprise, and government sectors by 2029 to be worth $264 billion. If just 10–15% of that spend shifts toward orchestration, observability, and control, that is a $26–40 billion market over the next 3–5 years.
What Salesforce must do to win enterprise AI mindshare
Based on Omdia’s ongoing conversations with enterprise buyers, Salesforce’s vendor peers, and our own research, there is a clear set of emerging expectations that vendors such as Salesforce will need to meet to grow enterprise traction in the agentic AI era:
- AI orchestration will become critical. Businesses will need AI agents that work better together, across different ecosystems—not just within a single vendor’s suite. Workflows increasingly extend across diverse app and data ecosystems, and the most compelling agentic AI use cases we are seeing enable cross-functional automation and value. Businesses will prioritize investment in agentic capabilities that span different systems and vendor boundaries.
- The definition of value is shifting. As discussed, businesses are becoming less focused on technical features and more on the outcomes they deliver. This is especially true when measuring AI impact, with businesses prioritizing metrics such as task resolution rates, time-to-value, and cost deflection.
- Traditional pricing models are being disrupted. In the agentic era, vendors will need to remain flexible and responsive to new pricing paradigms to meet industry norms and pricing metrics outside of conventional seat licensing. Instead, businesses are exploring pricing models that are tied to business impact, including per-action pricing, outcome-based subscriptions, or usage thresholds.
- IT is going to be central to making this succeed. Business functions will often define and fund the need, but IT will own the reality of making AI work at scale, especially in the enterprise. Integration, deployment, governance, security, and platform strategy all sit squarely in the IT wheelhouse. Omdia estimates that 60–70% of enterprise digital spend flows through IT, so selling around the CIO is out of step with how decisions are made and how digital budget is allocated. IT is no longer just the gatekeeper—they are becoming the orchestrator. If agentic AI is going to deliver real, cross-functional value, vendors need to sell through IT, not around it.
The three priorities influencing enterprise buying behaviors in the agentic AI age
The shifts below represent the direction of travel for enterprise buying behavior relating to agentic AI. They influence vendor selection and investment prioritization for enterprises. Salesforce has a real opportunity to lead here, but doing so will require that they continue to focus on
- Positioning Agentforce as a true cross-platform AI orchestration layer and not just an AI enhancement to Salesforce’s own clouds and app stack. The vendor is on this path already—evidenced by its recent acquisition of Informatica—but growing sentiment and awareness beyond its heritage will be key to success. The real opportunity for Salesforce going forward lies in becoming the agentic OS for enterprise workflows, regardless of where the data or processes live. Salesforce’s vast partner network will also play a critical role in scaling its agentic ambitions, but only if the company equips them with the frameworks, tooling, and incentives needed to build beyond CRM-centric use cases.
- Continuing to invest in how they support businesses in understanding AI value realization and recognition. In line with market demands, Salesforce offers action- and conversation-based pricing for Agentforce. As adoption and interest in these capabilities grow, enterprises will also need guidance and capabilities that help forecast, manage, and optimize AI usage. That means continuing to invest in new tooling that helps organizations track costs and model ROI across departments, and making it easier to connect AI investments to business impact.
- Redefine the platform proposition for the agentic age. The platform of the future won’t just be where people log in—it will be where AI thinks, plans, and acts. The vendors that lean into this shift, rather than resist it, will be the ones that shape the next wave of enterprise software.
Appendix
Further reading
Artificial Intelligence Software Market Forecasts – 1H25 Data (May 2025)
Author
Adam Holtby, Principal Analyst, Workplace Transformation
