From another Salesforce acquisition to a pair of Cisco ‘megadeals’, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Microsoft to Scrap Business Discounts Across All Its Online Services, Including 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365
Microsoft is removing discounting on Online Services products purchased through its volume licensing programs, starting November 1, 2025.
Its Online Services portfolio includes Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, Power, and other specialized solutions, such as Microsoft Defender and GitHub.
Currently, businesses can secure volume licenses for many of these online services at various price points, across Price Levels A–D. These levels vary by region and customer category.
However, the move means that every Online Service – sold under an Enterprise Agreement (EA) or a Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) – has one consistent price across each tier. That price will be available on Microsoft’s website.
As such, Microsoft limits some customers, renewing after October 31, 2025, from securing the same discounts as in their previous contracts.
That said, the standardized price could be lower than what some customers currently pay.
Moreover, while Microsoft customers may not be able to secure license cost discounts, they could still seek concessions on multi-year terms and value-added services (Read more…).
Salesforce to Snap Up Waii, Boost Data Cloud & Tableau Next
Salesforce has agreed to acquire Waii, a natural language-to-SQL platform provider.
Waii offers technology that translates everyday language into powerful SQL queries, removing the need for data scientists and engineers.
Its software benefits businesses as most store data in complex databases requiring SQL access. Waii allows non-technical users to extract data.
For instance, a service or sales rep may ask: “Which customers in region A are up for renewal?” From there, Waii generates an SQL code allowing the rep to retrieve the answer.
Alongside that capability, Waii has built a self-learning metadata knowledge graph. Think of it as a smart map of data that adapts to the business’s unique structure.
With Waii, Salesforce hopes to make the data stored on its platform more accessible and relevant to everyone in the business, regardless of their technical know-how.
Raveendrnathan Loganathan, EVP of Salesforce Data Cloud, doubled down on this. He said: “The future of business isn’t about having the most data; it’s about making that data speak a common language.
Our vision is to empower every employee, from the boardroom to the frontline, to have a trusted conversation with their data.
As Loganathan suggests, increasing data accessibility by taking away the need for specialized SQL skills is the principal driver for this acquisition (Read more…).
Cisco Confirms Two $1BN+ Megadeals, Including Webex
Cisco has confirmed that two enterprises placed mega-orders worth over $1BN during fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Notably, from a customer experience perspective, both deals included Cisco’s collaboration suite, which comprises CCaaS, CPaaS, and UCaaS solutions.
Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, celebrated the wins during the company’s latest earnings call. He said:
Two webscale customers each placed total orders of over $1,000,000,000 for networking, security, collaboration (Webex), and observability in FY 2025.
The megadeals underscore the growing payoff of Cisco’s strategy to pull Webex through as part of larger enterprise deals.
In 2024, Cisco accelerated that strategy by centralizing Webex with networking and security in one business unit, unifying the go-to-market for sales teams and partners.
Additionally, Cisco kick-started a drive to build capabilities from some solutions into others, enabling differentiated innovation (Read more…).
NiCE Tightens Its Salesforce Integration, Opens Up to Agentforce
NiCE has expanded its Salesforce partnership, announcing a deeper CCaaS-CRM integration.
The integration builds on the 2022 release of Bring Your Own Telephony with Salesforce Service Cloud Voice.
Back then, NiCE, like many CCaaS competitors, embedded its voice channel within Service Cloud.
Now, the contact center stalwart is adding workforce engagement management capabilities (WEM) into the CRM desktop and providing an integrated channel set.
In doing so, NiCE doesn’t present competing capabilities, as with similar Service Cloud integrations, but offers a unified channel mix and inserts unique features into the CRM.
Indeed, while NiCE has yet to specify which WEM tools it will augment the CRM with, it leads the CCaaS space in resource planning and may provide many value-adding capabilities.
Additionally, the vendor has pledged to join the Salesforce Zero Copy Partner Network, claiming to be the first CCaaS provider to do so.
By establishing a bidirectional Zero Copy integration with Salesforce Data Cloud, NiCE can pull data from its CXone Mpower solution into the customer data platform (CDP), and vice versa (Read more…).
