Dreamforce is the crown jewel of the Salesforce event universe — and it was epic. From amazing keynote sessions to demos showcasing the tools to solve your biggest challenges, Dreamforce had something for everyone (including the very best swag!). 

But are you ready for the understatement of the year? That’s right – AI pretty much stole the show. From generating hyper-relevant sales emails to prospects to anticipating a customer service issue with a VIP, AI is here to serve and support every aspect of the business.

Here’s the thing: it’s IT that enables everyone else to leverage AI.

As an IT leader, you’re already feeling the pressure to pivot to an AI-led approach across your organization. But you’re faced with the harsh reality of connecting and harmonizing your data while adhering to security and data governance standards? How can you build AI-powered applications that you can trust? And how can you do it now? 

AI for IT: 3 launches you can use

Let’s take a look at how these new AI launches, all announced at Dreamforce 2023, are helping IT teams get more done – and how you can, too! 

1. Unlock the full power of your data 

According to our latest State of IT report, 86% of IT decision-makers worldwide believe that generative AI will play a significant role in their organizations in the near future.

However, the average organization reported more than 1000 distinct applications used across the enterprise. Scarier still, fewer than a third of these apps are integrated. This is a problem when AI depends on accurate, unified data to deliver critical insights and predictions. 

In MuleSoft’s 2023 Connectivity Benchmark Report, enterprise IT leaders estimated spending an average of $4.7 million per year on custom integration efforts. That’s an increase of 31% from their 2022 estimate of $3.6 million.

With this in mind, it’s critical to have the right tools and development environments at the ready to implement and build the experiences customers expect. All of this with security and powerful generative AI capabilities built right in.

One way to get connected quickly is with MuleSoft, loaded with new generative AI capabilities to make integration faster than ever before. Connect to any data or system, wherever it resides, with security and governance built in. 

The MuleSoft Accelerator for Data Cloud can help you unlock and connect to critical industry systems quickly and securely. Once unlocked, your teams can finally harmonize with existing data sources through the power of Salesforce Data Cloud. This enables you to get a unified view of every customer so that you can deliver the right experiences at the right time every time.

Harmonizing data quickly? That’s music to our ears. 

2. Put your data to work 

If your teams have tackled the data unification challenge — bravo! After all, it’s these integration challenges that slow down digital transformation initiatives for 80% of IT teams.

But it’s actually garnering insights and getting recommendations from AI that IT leaders are being pressured to deliver. With unified data in place, how can we start to see the benefits of AI? Well, IT teams can make the building of apps and automations a bit easier with Prompt Builder.

Because every generative AI-powered CRM app depends on the quality of the AI prompt, it’s useful to get a boost with the provided prompt templates. These templates guide IT teams in building AI prompts that will root the AI in specific data and instructions — making it possible for the AI to deliver better suggestions more quickly. 

This low-code prompt management tool allows IT teams to build, test, and fine-tune trusted AI prompts within the Einstein Trust Layer. Any sensitive data is automatically masked to limit bias and toxicity.

With this tool, IT teams can leverage AI to build everything from auto-generated emails to product descriptions for websites. This means freeing up time to focus on deeper, more sophisticated IT challenges.

Low-code. Painless. That’s how AI should be.

3. Deploy safely and quickly 

With a tremendous amount of pressure to consistently deliver new solutions, IT leaders must balance speed and delivery with security.

We know all too well what can happen when an organization skirts security concerns to increase deployment speed. According to our recent State of the Connected Customer Report, the average cost of not complying with data protection regulations is $14.8 million. That’s a lot, and we want to work toward avoiding any data breaches.

One thing AI can help with is mitigating security concerns without compromising on deployment speed. By using secure development environments with sandboxes, IT teams can safely test AI processes without the risk of pushing any errors to the production org.

Plus, sandboxes are also a great space to train teams on how to responsibly build code with the help of generative AI.

When it comes to production environments, a new feature will help protect your sensitive data and stay compliant. Privacy Center will feature new data management policies where IT teams can delete stale data or de-identify at scale to protect the production org.

But if something were to go awry, we’ve got you covered there, too. Salesforce Backup is a native solution that allows you to protect against corruption, data loss, or coding errors by providing daily backups and the ability to restore quickly.

Delivering new solutions with peace of mind. Sounds peaceful.

Don’t sleep on AI

What’s top-of-mind for IT leaders is how to get the most out of AI — now. That starts with the right tools to pull together your data with security and governance built-in. Leading IT organizations are already transforming to accommodate the latest AI trends. Make sure you’re one of them.