Salesforce’s expanded partnership with Databricks gives humans and AI agents a single, governed foundation to search, reason, and act with confidence.
At Databricks Data + AI Summit ’26, Salesforce announced a major expansion of its Databricks partnership. The goal: solve one of the most persistent challenges in enterprise AI, connecting trusted data to the business context, governance, and workflows that turn information into action.
The announcement covers three connected areas: governed business context, cross-platform discovery and action, and enterprise context in the flow of work. Together, they form what Salesforce calls the shared foundation for human and agent work.
As a Databricks partner with deep roots in the Salesforce ecosystem, Oktana has been preparing for exactly this convergence.
Why Does This Partnership Matter?
AI agents are only as effective as the context they operate within. They need to know what data they are authorized to access, what actions they are permitted to take, and how those actions fit within business processes.
Enterprise data is often disconnected from that context. Analytics platforms hold the data, CRMs hold the customer relationships, and identity systems hold the permissions. When those layers do not speak to each other, AI can generate recommendations, but it cannot reliably execute them.
The expanded partnership closes that gap with a unified governance layer across Salesforce Data 360 and Databricks Unity Catalog.
What’s New in the Expanded Partnership?
AgentExchange is the unified marketplace where businesses can discover, 1. Governed Business Context. New capabilities including Federated Authentication, planned identity mapping, governance interoperability, and metadata-aware access controls help enterprises apply consistent security and compliance across both platforms, without recreating permissions for every system.
2. Cross-Platform Discovery and Action. New Federated Search makes enterprise data accessible bidirectionally: Agentforce agents can search Databricks, and Databricks users can search Salesforce. MuleSoft Agent Scanners for Databricks add automatic visibility in Agent Fabric, enabling agent governance at scale.
3. Enterprise Context in the Flow of Work. New Slack integrations bring Databricks Genie, the Databricks Q&A App, and the Databricks Security App directly into the channels where work already happens.
How These Pieces Work Together
Agentforce and AgentExchange are designed to complement each other.
- Agentforce builds and runs AI agents
- AgentExchange distributes and activates them
Together, they create a full lifecycle for enterprise AI:
| Layer | Capability | What It Enables |
| Foundation | Zero Copy + Federated Authentication | Governed data sharing across platforms |
| Discovery | Federated Search + Agent Fabric | Agents and users find context across systems |
| Action | Agentforce + MuleSoft + Unity AI Gateway | Agents act within approved workflows |
| Work | Slack integrations (Genie, Q&A, Security) | Insights and decisions inside daily collaboration |
| Scale | Combined governance and observability | Consistent controls as agent ecosystems grow |
This integrated approach removes the gaps that typically slow enterprise AI: identity drift between platforms, fragmented permissions, and agents that can reason but cannot act safely.
What This Means for Your Business
Organizations adopting this model can expect:
- Faster time to production for AI agents, because governance is no longer a custom integration project
- Lower data duplication costs through Zero Copy access to Databricks data inside Salesforce
- More accurate agent decisions with full enterprise context available at runtime
- Stronger compliance posture with federated identity and metadata-aware controls
Capturing these benefits requires a deliberate strategy across data architecture, identity federation, agent design, and workflow orchestration. Without that foundation, AI initiatives stall at the same friction points the partnership is designed to remove.
How Oktana Helps You Build on This Foundation
Oktana has been a Databricks partner for a long time, working alongside Salesforce, Data Cloud, and MuleSoft to deliver production AI systems for enterprise clients. That combined experience puts us in a strong position to help organizations adopt this shared foundation as the new capabilities roll out.
Our work includes:
- Agentic AI implementation with production agents that operate across CRM, data, and external systems
- Data architecture and Zero Copy design between Salesforce Data 360 and Databricks
- Governance and security for identity, permissions, and audit controls across agent ecosystems
- MuleSoft and Agent Fabric enablement connecting discovery, governance, and action
Where to Go From Here
The expanded partnership signals where enterprise AI is heading: a shared foundation where humans and agents work side by side, on the same trusted data, under the same governance controls.
Capturing that opportunity requires architectural decisions today. At Oktana, we help organizations design, build, and scale agentic AI systems that deliver measurable business results.
Contact Oktana to map your roadmap from Agentforce pilots to a fully governed agentic enterprise.
