Nick Johnston of Salesforce, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and
Business Development, shares insights live from AWS Re:Invent 2025. This
engaging discussion explores Salesforce's latest collaboration with AWS,
focusing on Agentforce 360 and the broader ecosystem of integrations. Hosted by
John Furrier of SiliconANGLE Media, the conversation delves into how Salesforce
innovates within the cloud landscape to enhance customer experiences. In this
video, Johnston discusses Salesforce's open platform strategy and the
significance of their new partnership with AWS. As the Senior Vice President of
Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at Salesforce, Johnston explains
how the company meets customer demands for customizable models and data choices.
With insights from theCUBE Research and host John Furrier, the session
highlights the collaborative efforts between Salesforce and AWS, including the
seamless integration of Agentforce 360 through the AWS Marketplace. A key
takeaway from the session is Salesforce's focus on simplifying customer
experiences by leveraging their strategic partnership with AWS. According to
Johnston, the integration of Agentforce 360 on AWS infrastructure offers a
streamlined procurement process for shared customers. Additionally, the
conversation touches on the exciting potential of AI and data integration in
driving business innovation, as emphasized by both Salesforce and industry
analysts.
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Nick Johnston, Salesforce
Nick Johnston of Salesforce, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and
Business Development, shares insights live from AWS Re:Invent 2025. This
engaging discussion explores Salesforce's latest collaboration with AWS,
focusing on Agentforce 360 and the broader ecosystem of integrations. Hosted by
John Furrier of SiliconANGLE Media, the conversation delves into how Salesforce
innovates within the cloud landscape to enhance customer experiences. In this
video, Johnston discusses Salesforce's open platform strategy and the
significance of their new partnership with AWS. As the Senior Vice President of
Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at Salesforce, Johnston explains
how the company meets customer demands for customizable models and data choices.
With insights from theCUBE Research and host John Furrier, the session
highlights the collaborative efforts between Salesforce and AWS, including the
seamless integration of Agentforce 360 through the AWS Marketplace. A key
takeaway from the session is Salesforce's focus on simplifying customer
experiences by leveraging their strategic partnership with AWS. According to
Johnston, the integration of Agentforce 360 on AWS infrastructure offers a
streamlined procurement process for shared customers. Additionally, the
conversation touches on the exciting potential of AI and data integration in
driving business innovation, as emphasized by both Salesforce and industry
analysts.
In this interview from AWS re:Invent 2025, Nick Johnston, senior vice president of technology partners at Salesforce, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to discuss the expanding intersection of AI agents, open ecosystems and cloud infrastructure. Johnston details the launch of Agentforce 360 for AWS, a strategic offering that simplifies procurement and setup by allowing customers to purchase directly through the AWS Marketplace. The discussion highlights how this partnership enables deep integration, allowing Salesforce solutions to run top-to-bottom on AWS infrast...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is the significance of the developments announced at AWS Reinvent 2025 regarding the future of work and cloud computing?add
What recent partnership was announced that enhances customer choice and simplifies procurement for Agentforce 360?add
What are the benefits for Amazon customers when purchasing Agentforce 360 through the marketplace?add
>> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage here at AWS Reinvent 2025. It's our 13th year covering Reinvent. We've seen them from the early days, cloud computing, abstract-away infrastructure, really opened up the SaaS era and the cloud growth, and now we're in the agent era where the abstraction is around all the data and work. You're starting to see the future of work emerge where agents are a big part of it. All the announcements around the open models, open training is going to create an integration and developer opportunity. We get great perspective here from Salesforce, Nick Johnston, SVP of technology partners at Salesforce. You guys are cutting across the ecosystem because you got a huge install base.
Nick Johnston
>> Sure do.
John Furrier
>> And they love to develop on cloud and/or on prem. So you guys are expanding and accelerating the Salesforce footprint.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> I mean, it's a huge opportunity. Explain what you guys are doing with AWS.
Nick Johnston
>> Absolutely. Well, I'll just generally comment on your point on the ecosystem. It's never been more important. We've always been an open platform and really love embracing the ecosystem, but now customers are asking for a lot of choice, specific choice around their data, choice around their models, keep it open so they can build how they want to build. And the partnership we just announced with AWS really embraces that ethos, if you will. So we just announced today, Agentforce 360 for AWS, which put simply is a simplified procurement path and setup path for customers to basically decide to use Agentforce 360, purchased through the AWS marketplace, running top to bottom on AWS infrastructure and AWS model-hosting services. So our shared customers who are deep with Salesforce, deep with AWS get a very simplified way to get Agentforce 360 going with the best of Salesforce and the best of AWS.
John Furrier
>> So I always like the cliches from the industry. This is the classic cliche that's being delivered: meet the customers where they are. I mean, this is like basically... If I'm an Amazon customer, I can just go to the marketplace, get Agentforce 360, and just be on my way.
Nick Johnston
>> That's right.
John Furrier
>> I mean, that's really what it is, right?
Nick Johnston
>> That's right. That's what it is. And it's about helping our customers get the benefits that they have from their AWS agreements and all the things that they can do by buying third-party software through the marketplace. But more importantly, it automates some of the setups so that the customers who are intentional about wanting to run on Bedrock, they are intentional about wanting to use the models that we support on Bedrock, can do so by buying this offering through the marketplace, and it just comes out of the box set up that way. And so it's going to simplify that setup process, but it also adds the benefit to the customers on their incentives and the benefit for the AWS sellers as well.
John Furrier
>> Nick, I want to just chat, kind of go back in history for a minute when Mark started Salesforce back in the day, he's always been a community guy. And if you look at trailblazers, all the Salesforce success, it's always been around community, and obviously product leadership, and he was cloud before cloud was cloud, obviously Salesforce. So it's interesting to see that. But now the integrations is where people want to connect. So Salesforce customers are integrating in with other services, so the new ecosystem is a connected ecosystem where that community is mostly devs or builders. How do you see that extending through? Because this is where a lot of the... I mean, I was talking to someone the other day and said the new biz dev is integration, not just signing a deal or doing it. So this has kind of become... And it's technical because you can whip up code these days super fast. Integration is a very key thing. What's your thoughts on that? How do you see that?
Nick Johnston
>> Well, it's actually been a very intentional part of our strategy. We were talking earlier about Data Cloud, now known as Data 360. When we built that product, we built it on AWS, first and foremost, but we also knew it had to be open. We had to help our customers integrate and connect their data from sources that weren't naturally connected to Salesforce, whether it was Databricks or Snowflake or the Redshift environments, et cetera. And so we could harmonize that data, have a metadata understanding of it, and then help our customers activate through our clouds. And so from the beginning, we've been thinking about open data, and now we're thinking about open models and the ability to use whatever model a customer wants, and the models sit on top of the data.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and again, one of those shared, kind of open philosophies of you guys with the industry. I want to talk about where I think the holy grail is on this show, because one of the things that jumped out at me is the Frontier agents was huge. The Nova Forge was huge. AI Factories was just much more of a kind of a positioning, but I love that too. But the Nova Forge was huge because the whole thesis of that is take your data and put it into Nova and pick your, however bake that you want to take it and make it your own. That's like a gold-plated opportunity for Salesforce because that's where the data is.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, absolutely.
John Furrier
>> So explain that, because I think this is a key point of why I think your Salesforce relationship with Amazon shines, because if I have all my data in either marketing, cloud, or Salesforce, I can just bring Nova in.
Nick Johnston
>> Totally. And it's going to open up a lot of really interesting opportunities for us because the pre-training that we can do, I thought Matt did a great job explaining this in the keynote yesterday, the things we might be able to do now because our stack is also built on AWS and we'll be able to create models for ourselves now with this Nova Forge capability, use the data that we have about our systems and our understanding of workflow, et cetera, and maybe create something that's far more powerful and more performant than what we could otherwise. So it's early for us, but the teams are really excited to go dig in.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. And you guys also have some developer chops too.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> What's the big takeaway for you at the event? Obviously, I love Frontier agents. I'm sure that's going to be great for you guys too. What's your favorite takeaway?
Nick Johnston
>> I think the thing I'm most excited about, obviously selfishly I'm excited about this Agentforce 360 for AWS announcement because I think this is going to take the go to-market motion that we've really had some great strength and momentum with AWS on and take it to the next level. I was sharing with the team earlier, we've been the fastest-growing ISV ever on the AWS marketplace, and now we have a new path to keep that momentum growing with Agentforce, which is our most important product we've ever built.
John Furrier
>> I always talk to Matt at the marketplace. Talk about the importance of that go to-market. I mean, from a business standpoint, talk about why that's important. I mean, basically it's a procurement, automated procurement, but it's also, there's other things that Amazon does. What's the secret there?
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, it's more than that. And from my standpoint, it's the thing you always look for in a perfect partnership, which is something that benefits the customer first, something that benefits the company you work for, and the partner. All three have to be able to get value from what you're building. And this is one of those scenarios where our customers who have material investments with AWS can buy third-party software in a simplified way that also burns down against their macro commit so they can think more strategically about where their bets are from an IT standpoint. It's good for our sellers because it allows us to have options. We don't force anything down this path. We can tell customers, "Look, you can buy from us directly, but if it happens to benefit you from buying through the AWS marketplace, we really support that." And then it benefits AWS because they create some amazing field incentive programs. And so we can all show up as one team in supporting that customer.
John Furrier
>> It's interesting. You're like a part of the ecosystem, but everyone in the ecosystem is a customer.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, that's true. It's true.
John Furrier
>> It's like a double-win there.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, that's right.
John Furrier
>> All right, so what's your plans going forward? You got, obviously, a mandate strategic technology partnership. What's the mission? Share your mission. What are you focused on?
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, I mean, we're focusing first on the customer feedback. And right now there's just been so much customer feedback about everything happening around AI. But I think you hit on it really well with the importance of data, first and foremost, and we have our Data 360 offering, which is the foundation for how we orchestrate and harmonize data in the enterprise for activation through our agents. And then it's, how do we go faster with Agentforce? So what you're going to see us doing more of is not just interesting go to-market partnerships like this, but how do we think about the next evolution of where AI agents are going to go? Think about voice. That's a really important opportunity for us in the contact center. Service Cloud is our largest cloud. So the number of companies that want to be able to have really powerful voice agents inside the contact center is a huge opportunity for us, and we're going to run at that. Beyond that, avatars. What is a digital human going to look like when companies want to scale their support offerings or maybe help their inside sales organizations engage with customers in a much more human way? What could that be? So I think there's some areas like that where I think we're a little more on the cutting edge that we're looking at, but it's really going to be about the combination of data, the workflow that we have in our CRM applications, the AI agents that sit on top of that, and you can't forget Slack. Slack is going to be a really big differentiator for us where teams and people can collaborate with agents in the mix, and that's a unique value prop.
John Furrier
>> I was just talking with Arvind Jain from Glean. He loves Slack. All your customers want that search, and you start to see that integration. And you also have technology partnerships in your title. We just had Deepgram on before you came in. They're doing really audio, so that's going to be like the bidirectional streaming of data in SageMaker. That's going to be a perfect customer support opportunity maybe, or an avatar sales manager, or-
Nick Johnston
>> That's a perfect example of how we're thinking about where these partnerships need to evolve to. And it was great to see them as I was coming in because there's more that we need to be talking about. But that hits perfectly on where we're trying to go.
John Furrier
>> The key was one big biz dev machine, pumping into one-
Nick Johnston
>> I love it. That's great.
John Furrier
>> Well, they're all doing cool things. We like to focus on that. I want to ask you about just a practical question because we talked about on camera. So we're a customer of Salesforce, and to us, it's a portal we're in, we use it all the time. And then we also have a lot of Amazon development going on in AWS with our video data lake and everything else. So how should I think about Agentforce 360 on AWS? Because we're buying a lot of services, we do Claude, we do the high-level services, but also Salesforce is our other thing over here, so in our business is two things. How do I connect those? Take me through that. Can I connect it? Is it all one thing?
Nick Johnston
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> They're not silos. They're-
Nick Johnston
>> No, absolutely not.
John Furrier
>> Take me through what-
Nick Johnston
>> So first and foremost, what you need to think about is this is Agentforce 360, the product that you'd be buying or adding to your stack, which we should make sure we take care of for you as a follow-up from this. But it's just running on AWS. And when that becomes true, it's running completely top to bottom on AWS, and the models that we're using inside of Salesforce are hosted inside of AWS as well. You as an AWS customer will have much more seamless ways of integrating with your AWS stack underneath it. So what we will cover for you is all the setup, all the control so that it's an AWS-native offering, and then we can help you integrate more deeply with the AWS services that you're using on the other side-
John Furrier
>> So my data is-
Nick Johnston
>> So you shouldn't have to build anything.
John Furrier
>> But you guys have all the mechanisms to move the data in with Agentforce as kind of a connective tissue between-
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, we have what we call our zero-copy partner network, of which AWS is a part of for our Data 360 offering, and so we can create the metadata schema mapping of the Salesforce object and record model with what you have inside of Redshift as an example, make sure that that's all really well-aligned, and then your business users, your team that I met earlier in the lobby, they'll be able to just use Salesforce with data that lives in AWS. They won't know the difference.
John Furrier
>> I love the simplicity that came out at Dreamforce, actually. A lot of focus in the Slack, obviously. I mean, there's so much... There's a treasure trove of data that you guys have, and I think the Nova thing is going to be great. Well, keep us posted on any best practices and customer examples. I think people want to know how to set this up. How do I get started? How do I see value immediately? How would you answer that question if someone said, "Hey, I love it. What's the three steps to get some value? What's the engagement path?"
Nick Johnston
>> So I think the first step is pick something very straightforward that you can go and try to automate. We're seeing a really good amount of traction with customers in customer service. Just let's get Agentforce up and running on your customer-facing website and let's show you how quickly Agentforce can help you solve tickets faster than you could on your own or with just a typical bot. A really good example that you'll hear covered by us more is William Sonoma, just going into the holidays. Had Agentforce running on their website and saw amazing traffic and amazing engagement that previously was getting stuck in some support queues, et cetera. So we're pretty excited about that. So pick something simple. I recommend customer support, but go run at that. And then AB test it. Prove it. Make sure that the data shows you what you're getting. But also work with an expert. And we've got an amazing ecosystem of SIs that are out there now helping customers think about the different building blocks that are out there and guiding them more on not just what you could do, but what you should do. And I'm seeing a lot of really good engagement from the SIs across the globe thinking more strategically about the ecosystem than maybe before where they were really practice-focused. So those would be my recommendations.
John Furrier
>> I think that's where the marketplace kind of comes in handy. I mean, Matt Garman at his keynote, he doesn't tend to talk about ROI and payback much because he's kind of technical nerd, but he actually showed that it's three to six months in, you get the kickup. So with the experience that Amazon had, he was kind of laying out the rule of thumb. You got to give it some time, three to six months, to kind of get that scale, kind of kicks up.
Nick Johnston
>> I think that's right. I think that's right, and-
John Furrier
>> All right, well, we got Pasquale coming in, PQ-
Nick Johnston
>> PQ....
John Furrier
>> from Connect next.
Nick Johnston
>> We know him well.
John Furrier
>> And again, we're going to hit that hard on how Connect's using AI and how that factors into the system of records.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah. And what I'll say on that is the history of this partnership, 10 year-plus partnership, first chapter was we made the decision to move our infrastructure to run on AWS; the second, we had shared customers who said to us, "Hey, I run on AWS. Make it easier," and so we started building integrations; third chapter was go to market. But in that second chapter, PQ's business and Connect is one of the key things we did. We started bundling Connect into our service cloud. So we started selling what we called it at the time Service Cloud Voice, which came with Amazon Connect inside it. So talk to PQ about that. He's been a great partner for us over the years too.
John Furrier
>> I really liked how you laid out those three chapters because it's kind of a new face of Salesforce as a company. It's well-bigger and broader capabilities now. It's data.
Nick Johnston
>> Yeah, it's super important for us. And frankly, it's important to us because it's important to our customers.
John Furrier
>> Nick, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.
Nick Johnston
>> Appreciate it.
John Furrier
>> All right. Salesforce is here in the house. Again, cloud and AI. Again, the data's critical on these models. If you have your own customer data, you have any kind of proprietary data, that's your crown jewels, it's your intellectual property, and having agents systematically work end to end, that seems to be the formula again here at AWS. More coverage coming after the short break.
John Furrier
Nick Johnston