Salesforce, Snowflake and more are teaming up to fix today’s data problems

A major data alliance takes shape

On Sept. 23, 2025, Snowflake, Salesforce and a coalition of partners launched the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI), an open-source effort to standardize semantic metadata so companies can more easily combine, interpret and trust data across systems.

With companies often struggling to make sense of customer information across multiple systems, this alliance aims to simplify how organizations connect, clean, and use their data. It signals a push toward solving long-standing pain points in enterprise data management.

Why scattered data is a problem?

Modern businesses rely on dozens of apps, from sales platforms to marketing dashboards. While each generates useful information, the result is often disconnected silos. Data trapped in one platform can’t easily be combined with insights from another.

This fragmentation reduces efficiency and makes decisions less reliable. By joining forces, Salesforce, Snowflake, and partners want to give companies a way to centralize information, ensuring every team works from the same trusted source.

The role of Salesforce

As one of the most widely used platforms for customer relationship management, Salesforce holds vast amounts of client and sales data. The company is contributing its expertise in managing customer information and integrating business workflows.

By participating in this alliance, Salesforce strengthens its role as the hub where customer and business data come together. Its tools could become central in ensuring accurate, secure, and real-time data sharing across industries.

Snowflake’s contribution

Snowflake is known for its powerful data cloud, which allows companies to store, share, and analyze massive datasets at scale. In this collaboration, Snowflake provides the infrastructure that enables seamless integration between different platforms.

Its technology supports real-time queries, strong security, and the ability to manage structured and unstructured data. Snowflake’s role is to act as the backbone of this data alliance, ensuring speed, accessibility, and resilience for enterprise users.

Tackling trust in data

One of the alliance’s biggest goals is to improve trust in the data businesses use every day. Inaccurate or duplicated records can lead to poor decisions, frustrated customers, and wasted resources.

By standardizing how data is stored and shared, the companies aim to reduce errors and improve confidence in analytics. Businesses that once questioned whether reports were reliable could instead operate with cleaner, more consistent data, making insights far more actionable.

Partners beyond Salesforce and Snowflake

The initiative includes a range of partners, from technology firms like dbt Labs and RelationalAI to financial-services organizations such as BlackRock, signaling cross-industry interest in standardizing business semantics.

Technology partners and data infrastructure providers are contributing specialized tools for integration, security, and governance. Together, they bring complementary strengths to the table.

Improving AI readiness

AI depends heavily on the quality of underlying data. If information is inconsistent or inaccurate, even advanced AI models can give misleading results. This alliance helps companies prepare their data for AI-driven analytics and automation.

By offering cleaner, unified datasets, businesses will be better positioned to adopt tools such as predictive analytics, personalized recommendations, and advanced forecasting. The partnership essentially lays the groundwork for more trustworthy AI adoption in the future.

Breaking down industry silos

Different industries often manage data in unique ways, creating further complexity. A healthcare provider, for example, handles patient records, while a retailer tracks customer purchases. The alliance recognizes that one-size-fits-all solutions won’t work.

Instead, the companies aim to provide flexible frameworks that adapt to industry-specific needs. By doing so, they hope to break down silos not only between apps but also across entire sectors, enabling wider collaboration.

Data security at the core

Security is a central pillar of this alliance. Companies are under constant pressure to protect sensitive information from breaches and leaks. With more data sharing across systems, safeguarding against unauthorized access becomes even more critical.

Snowflake’s secure infrastructure, paired with Salesforce’s compliance tools, helps ensure that data can be shared without compromising privacy. The collaboration stresses strong encryption, governance policies, and clear user controls to maintain trust.

Helping small businesses too

Data problems don’t only affect large corporations. Smaller firms also juggle multiple tools, often without the resources to maintain robust data systems. This initiative could level the playing field by making enterprise-grade data management more accessible.

By simplifying integrations and lowering the complexity of managing multiple sources, small businesses could gain the same benefits as larger organizations, including clearer insights and reduced inefficiencies.

Real-time decision making

OSI focuses on shared semantics; combined with participants’ real-time data features (for example, Snowflake’s fast query engine and Salesforce Data Cloud’s streaming updates), the framework can make real-time decision-making more reliable.

But the standard itself addresses consistency of meaning rather than transport speed. For industries like finance, healthcare, or logistics, where speed is critical, real-time data access could make the difference between catching an opportunity and falling behind competitors.

Reducing duplication and waste

Duplicate records are one of the most common data problems companies face. Whether it’s multiple entries for the same customer or mismatched product details, duplication can create confusion and waste resources.

This initiative tackles duplication directly by introducing standards for how information is stored, matched, and updated. The result should be cleaner records, less manual correction, and smoother workflows for employees at every level.

The customer experience payoff

Better data doesn’t just help back-office operations; it directly improves customer experience. When information is accurate and consistent, companies can personalize interactions, anticipate needs, and respond faster.

For customers, this means fewer frustrating errors, more relevant offers, and smoother service. By focusing on data quality, the alliance is ultimately supporting stronger, more reliable relationships between businesses and the people they serve.

A competitive advantage

Companies that succeed at managing data often outperform those that don’t. Reliable analytics lead to smarter decisions, better strategies, and stronger results.

This alliance provides a framework that could help participants and adopters gain a competitive edge in their markets. As businesses increasingly rely on data to guide growth, those with trusted systems will be better equipped to innovate and adapt.

Setting industry standards

Beyond solving immediate problems, the initiative could also influence long-term industry standards. If widely adopted, the practices and tools developed through this alliance may become benchmarks for how companies everywhere manage and share data.

By shaping these standards early, Salesforce, Snowflake, and their partners are positioning themselves as leaders in the future of enterprise data management.

The drive to set industry standards echoes broader collaborations, such as IBM and AMD team up to shape the future with quantum computing, where early leadership defines long-term impact.

Looking ahead

The alliance between Salesforce, Snowflake, and partners is just beginning, but its goals are ambitious. By tackling fragmentation, improving trust, and boosting AI readiness, the collaboration aims to reshape how businesses use their most valuable resource: data.

In the years ahead, the success of this effort will be measured not only by technical improvements but also by how much it helps companies make smarter, faster, and more customer-focused decisions.

The focus on data-driven improvements connects directly to how companies can enhance service with tools like those in 17 tech tools for effective customer support.

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This slideshow was made with AI assistance and human editing.