Salesforce Data 360 is Salesforce's customer data platform — the data unification, segmentation, and activation engine underlying the Agentforce 360 platform. Renamed from Data Cloud to Data 360 at Dreamforce (October 2025). Named the sole top Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CDPs — highest in both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Reported 141% YoY growth in paying customers (Salesforce FQ3'26).
Architecture. Packaged CDP tightly integrated with the Salesforce application cloud (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud). Ingests data from Salesforce-native sources and external systems. Profiles unified in real-time; segments activated through Salesforce Journey Builder, Flow, and third-party destinations. Unified profile ("Customer 360 profile") is the data context layer for Agentforce AI agents.
Pipeline stages (Connect → Harmonize → Analyze → Activate)
| Stage | Description |
|---|---|
| Connect | 270+ connectors, APIs, SDKs, MuleSoft integration |
| Harmonize | Data standardization, deduplication, Customer 360 Data Model mapping |
| Analyze | Identity resolution (deterministic + probabilistic), audience segmentation |
| Activate | Real-time segment delivery to downstream destinations |
Identity resolution trust hierarchy
Deterministic and probabilistic resolution operates on a tiered confidence model:
- Email: high confidence
- Phone: medium confidence
- Name + supplemental attribute combinations: low confidence
Activation targets (confirmed March 2026)
Marketing Cloud journey orchestration, Commerce Cloud personalization, external ad platforms (via destination connectors), Service Cloud agent context injection, custom storefronts via API.
Platformization model. The source.martechtherapy-com analysis frames Salesforce Data 360 as the canonical example of the "platformization" model: CDP as the data foundation for a broad enterprise application ecosystem. CDP value is amplified by Salesforce platform lock-in — organizations already on Salesforce CRM, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud gain compounding leverage; organizations outside the Salesforce ecosystem gain proportionally less.
Where it fits. Organizations with material investment in Salesforce CRM and/or Marketing Cloud seeking to unify customer data and activate within the Salesforce universe. Not ideal for organizations with a CDW-centric data strategy or multi-cloud activation requirements outside the Salesforce ecosystem.
Confidence note: Gartner MQ sole top Leader status sourced from three independent secondary analyses. Primary Gartner report remains paywalled. Salesforce-adjacent community sources used for product-fact (rename date, capability list) only — see web-refresh-bias-flags.md FLAG 1. Confidence will rise to ≥0.90 once source.salesforce-help-salesforce-data-360-release-history-2026 is fetched (queued).