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What’s Next for Salesforce?
Posted on September 26, 2025 • 3 min read • 585 wordsMarketing Cloud Next, Tableau Next, and the Rise of Data Cloud
Introduction
Salesforce has made two big announcements this year that signal where the platform is headed: Tableau Next and Marketing Cloud Next. Both push Agentforce and Data Cloud further into the center of Salesforce’s strategy, while also hinting at changes in how customers may pay for and consume these tools. Here’s a quick look at what was announced — and what it could mean for the future of Salesforce.
Tableau Next
Tableau Next represents Salesforce’s vision for agentic analytics — bringing personalized, contextual, and actionable insights to wherever work happens.
Built on Hyperforce and powered by Data Cloud as the unified data layer, Tableau Next offers enterprise-grade performance and a flexible, API-first design. It’s tightly integrated with Agentforce, positioning AI agents not just as assistants, but as active participants in turning data into insights and actions.
Key features include:
- Tableau Semantics: an AI-powered semantic layer integrated with Data Cloud, enabling faster, more accurate insights.
- Pre-built analytics skills: empowering both users and agents to analyze data and act on it quickly.
- Concierge, Data Pro, and Inspector: tools for natural language queries, anomaly detection, and streamlined data preparation.
- Slack integration: enabling live, permission-aware insights and agentic analytics directly in team conversations.
This isn’t just a new product — it’s a step toward embedding analytics into workflows and making insights instantly actionable.
Marketing Cloud Next
Marketing Cloud Next is billed as the “first full-funnel agentic marketing solution,” reframing marketing from a one-way broadcast into a two-way conversation.
Powered by Agentforce, Marketing Cloud Next puts autonomous AI agents at the heart of campaign creation, personalization, engagement, and optimization. These agents act more like seasoned team members than junior assistants — they can autonomously assemble campaigns, manage responses, and optimize performance, freeing marketers to focus on strategy and creativity.
Some standout capabilities include:
- Agentforce Campaign Creation: build and launch campaigns in hours with AI handling audience targeting, content, and journey setup.
- Agentic engagements: turning “do-not-reply” messages into two-way conversations across channels.
- Personalization Decisioning and Web Curation: adapting offers and experiences in real time.
- Lead Generation & Management: nurturing, qualifying, and booking meetings with customers 24/7.
- Paid Media Optimization: AI-driven ad performance monitoring and spend adjustments.
So far, Marketing Cloud Next has seen a less branded rollout than expected when it was announced in June of this year (it’s still not listed as a “product” with its own pricing on the Salesforce site), but inside sources suggest there are some big updates expected in February 2026. Expect it to be a big spotlight topic at Dreamforce.
What This Means for the Future of Salesforce
Taken together, Tableau Next and Marketing Cloud Next point to a broader trend: Salesforce doubling down on Agentforce and Data Cloud as the foundation of its next era. Both products rely heavily on trusted data from Data Cloud and use AI agents not just to assist, but to autonomously drive outcomes.
They also suggest a continued move toward consumption-based pricing models, where value is tied directly to usage and outcomes rather than static licenses. For customers, this means more flexibility but also more focus on adoption and ROI and a reduction in predictability of costs for organizations, which some have cited as an obstacle to AI adoption.
Heading into Dreamforce, it’s clear that Salesforce’s future lies in deeper AI integration, real-time data, and agent-driven automation — with Agentforce and Data Cloud as the pillars holding it all together.
Until next time, keep working hard, smart, and happy. We’ll see you in the cloud!