Agents Unleashed: Interoperability to Power a $6 Trillion Economy

Salesforce is a leading player in “agentic interoperability,” enabling AI agents from various platforms, vendors, and data sources to connect and collaborate, unlocking unprecedented customer value and driving a new $6 trillion agent economy.

Why it matters: Eighty-four percent of enterprise CIOs believe AI will be as significant to their businesses as the rise of the internet, and the rise of AI agents only increases the technology’s transformative potential. Companies must embrace an “agent-first” approach to realize massive productivity gains and new business opportunities, moving beyond isolated AI applications to a seamlessly integrated digital workforce. Salesforce is leading this shift with Agentforce, a trusted and complete agentic AI platform built on open standards.

Driving the news: In a recent discussion, Salesforce, with partners Seismic and Box, highlighted why agentic interoperability is so important:

• Seamless and secure agent collaboration: The next major challenge for AI agents is working seamlessly and securely with external agents, enterprise data sources, and tools.
• Open standards as the backbone: Open standards like MCP (Multi-Agent Communication Protocol) and A2A (Agent-to-Agent) are gaining traction and forming the foundation for interoperability between agents.
• Agentforce 3 and AgentExchange: Salesforce is delivering enterprise-grade AI supporting MCP standards through Agentforce 3 and its new AI agent gateway. The expanded AgentExchange facilitates the discovery and deployment of trusted external tools, pre-validated MCP servers, and external agents via A2A.
• Powering agent-first businesses: Partners like Seismic are building agentic solutions on AgentExchange to solve pain points for sellers and sales managers, recognizing Agentforce as the central platform for sales workflows in the new era of agentic CRM.
• Unstructured data and permission-aware agents: Box, a content services leader, emphasizes the importance of permission-aware, secure collaboration with agents, especially given that over 90% of content is unstructured, a domain where AI agents excel. Box supports MCP calls to enable seamless and secure agent interaction.

What they’re saying: 

• “Being agent first, the idea of agentic transformation is a huge imperative for organizations … by building a digital workforce of AI agents alongside humans, organizations stand to realize unprecedented productivity gains and basically the creation of entirely new business opportunities.” — Gary Lerhaupt, VP of Product Architecture, Salesforce
• “It was obvious to us that Agentforce was the place that sellers were going to be … the value we used to provide for human agents, we’re not providing to AI agents.” — Tom Strader, VP of Incubation Engineering, Seismic
• “What’s most important is being permissions-aware and having that secure collaboration with agents. And that’s where Box is really leading the charge to empower organizations forward, leveraging AI and agents … So working with your content, and enterprise workflows to make them both seamless and secure.” — Yashoda Bhavnani, Head of AI, Box

It was obvious to us that Agentforce was the place that sellers were going to be … the value we used to provide for human agents, we’re not providing to AI agents.

Tom Strader, VP of Incubation Engineering, Seismic

Between the lines: Unlike companies building bespoke agents for isolated platforms, Salesforce’s approach, driven by Agentforce and AgentExchange, fosters a multi-agent ecosystem where tools like Seismic and Box can interoperate. This enables agents to orchestrate complex tasks across various applications and data sources, understanding nuanced differences in information. 

• Salesforce’s commitment to open standards like MCP is critical, as it encourages broader adoption by SaaS vendors and independent third parties, leading to a win-win for the entire ecosystem.

What’s next: Salesforce continues to expand its AgentExchange, which currently hosts over 200 partners, positioning itself as the central destination for agent interoperability in the enterprise. This collaborative ecosystem is paving the way for the “Gen Agent” workforce, where AI agents will become the new user interface.

More information:

• Read how Salesforce’s open ecosystem is driving trusted agent interoperability
• Get the latest news on Agentforce 3