How software integration fuels the agentic enterprise

Businesses today aren’t asking whether artificial intelligence (AI) is worth the investment. They’re asking how quickly they can move from scattered experiments to full-scale implementations.

At our recent Agentforce World Tour in Sydney, Leandro Perez said: “In 2026, AI is no longer a question of belief; it’s a question of execution.”

But the big talking point of the day centred on an even more important debate: How can businesses bring AI agents, apps, humans, and data together into a unified platform? And, just as importantly, how can they use that foundation to turn intelligence into action?

It’s one of the common challenges that many businesses are already experiencing. In Australia, enterprises now run around 1,081 apps, yet only 22% are integrated. And while 89% of data and analytics leaders believe a strong foundation is critical for successful AI, 48% of organisations feel they lack the data quality to support implementations.

In short, AI is arriving fast, but the glue is taking a little longer to stick.

One way to solve this problem is with an integration solution. The right platform will help your business connect data, agents, and workflows across cloud environments, on-premises systems, and everything in between. This creates a unified framework where humans and agents can work from the same context rather than dealing with disconnected legacy systems and fragmented context.

In this guide, we’ll explore how these platforms work, why they matter, and how an integration platform can help your business embed agentic AI with confidence.

• Businesses aren’t short on AI ideas. What they need now is a connected foundation that helps agents, people, and data work together in the real flow of business.
• Agents can only create value when they can access the right data, navigate the right workflows, and act within the right guardrails. That starts with integration.
• A modern integration platform helps businesses connect systems, govern access, and create a shared operating layer where humans and agents can work together.
• The real opportunity isn’t just adding more intelligence. It’s building a repeatable, agent-ready foundation that helps every workflow deliver more value than the last.

• Businesses aren’t lacking AI ambition. They’re lacking a foundation.
• Integration platforms are the glue of the agentic enterprise
• How integration platforms work (under the hood)
• How an integration platform sets the stage for agentic AI
• How Panasonic APAC use Agentforce MuleSoft to turn complexity into connected growth
• Build agents that can move as fast as your business
• FAQs

AI has already moved well beyond the pilot stage. In Australia, organisations are using 11 agents on average, and this is set to rise by 73% in two years. In addition, 87% of businesses say most or all teams and functions have adopted AI agents in their workflows.

The takeaway? Businesses aren’t standing on the sidelines. They're pushing forward, testing what’s possible, and looking for new ways to turn momentum into measurable impact.

But the sticking point isn’t ambition; it’s execution. As agents spread across business ecosystems, they need clear coordination and the right guardrails to do useful work at scale. Ninety-six per cent of businesses agree that the success of AI agents depends on seamless data integrations, yet 99.5% face challenges when they try to get their data connected.

Without a solid foundation, agents can only work with a fragment of the context, leaving businesses with more activity, but not necessarily more progress.

The opportunities available are no secret. In service, AI is expected to handle half of all customer cases by 2027. In sales, 26% of reps with agents say AI frees them up to focus on higher-value work. And for productivity, desk workers using AI spend 85% of technicians report at least a moderate increase in dispatcher productivity . But these benefits come from connectivity, not silos.

“The goal of all Australian organisations should be to move past experimental tools and build a unified system where people, data, and agents work together to turn intelligence into action.” – Leandro Perez

So, the objective isn’t adding more agents for every use case. It’s building a connected system that gives those agents the context to thrive. This is the real AI imperative, and the right integration platform can provide the necessary foundation.

Building the connectivity agentic AI demands starts with a strong foundation. Ultimately, agents run on coordination, access, and trust. They need the right business context and guardrails to power useful work at scale.

A strong integration platform brings all of that context together into a single, trusted space. The right solution will help you connect data, workflows, and approved actions across your cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. It can also help apply governance as that foundation grows and create reusable building blocks that humans and agents depend on.

MuleSoft’s own research illustrates the digital labour benefit of getting this right. A strong platform can accelerate time to market by 78% and reduce maintenance costs by 74%, as teams spend less time switching between systems, chasing updates, and patching together context by hand.

It also sets the stage for AI that can do more than routine admin. Integration helps agents work with trusted context, move through governed workflows, and take action within the real flow of business rather than sitting at the edge of it. This turns connectivity into value by creating the kind of unified framework that agentic enterprises depend on.

In a broad sense, an integration platform enables your business systems to work together. Think of it as the connective tissue that ensures your data, agents, apps, and workflows can exchange information in a consistent, secure way.

In the past, businesses often used a “connect it when you need it” approach, building separate links for separate tasks. This would solve one problem in the moment, but it also created a tangle of custom connections that were hard to manage, scale, and govern.

Integration platforms replace that jumble of wires with structured, reusable pathways that support workflows, automations, and agents. Here’s how they work:

• Connectors link your business’s systems, whether they’re in the cloud, on-premises, or somewhere in between.
• APIs act as reusable building blocks, packaging data and actions so teams, workflows, and agents can reuse them without digging through underlying systems.
• Governance and access controls maintain consistency by managing who can use what, how APIs are secured, and how standards are enforced across environments.
• Reusable assets can then be published and shared so future projects don’t have to reinvent the same connections, flows, or governance patterns each time.

Put together, this gives businesses a clean, low-code operating layer for data, workflows, and automation, providing the stable foundation that agentic AI needs to be valuable at scale and that teams need to make day-to-day decisions with confidence.

To see how a strong, integrated foundation helps create the conditions for agentic AI, watch the video below to see how Salesforce fuels Agentforce with MuleSoft.

Software integration is the key to turning AI into real business value. But to do that at scale, you need a platform that can connect systems, apply governance, and make successful patterns reusable. In practical terms, this means looking for a solution that can help you:

1. Build the foundation
2. Put guardrails around it
3. Make it repeatable
4. Bring humans and agents together in real work

Taken together, these capabilities turn disconnected systems into an agent-ready operating model. Below, we’ll explore these features in more detail and explore how each helps businesses move from AI ambition to execution.

Agents need the right context before they can deliver value. But that creates a challenge: businesses usually don’t store that context in one tidy place. Customer records live in the CRM. Orders sit in an ERP. Finance has its own source of truth. A few shared spreadsheets try to hold the whole thing together. This creates a knot that can be difficult to untangle.

In Australia, 43% of organisations cite data silos and disconnected systems as a top barrier to implementing AI. Without a strong integration ecosystem, even the most powerful agents won’t be able to operate reliably. This is why the first job of any powerful integration platform is to bring the right systems into a single, unified foundation. The right platform will help you:

• Connect the systems behind your most valuable workflows so data can move between sales, service, finance, and external platforms more reliably.
• Reduce manual handoffs by pulling information from the right systems rather than asking teams to chase down details themselves.
• Create a clearer source of truth so decisions are based on joined-up context rather than scattered updates from different tools.
• Set the stage for agentic AI by making trusted data easier to access across workflows, automations, and agent experiences.

For instance, Agentforce MuleSoft includes a library of prebuilt connectors that can link enterprise application software, databases, and systems across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. This creates an integrated foundation that brings critical data closer together, making it easier for agents and teams to work from the same context.

The value here goes beyond a clean architecture. Teams spend less time stitching together context. Workflows move with fewer bottlenecks. And agents start working from the same connected foundation as everyone else, opening the door to reliable agentic outcomes.

Getting workflows, APIs, and agents into the same ecosystem is one thing. Keeping them safe as you scale is another.

This is the corner piece of the agentic puzzle, but it’s also one that many businesses leave as an afterthought. Only 54% of organisations have a centralised governance framework for agentic capabilities, while 27% of APIs are still ungoverned.

Aside from reducing security and compliance risks, governance will keep data quality and agent behaviour consistent as your ecosystem expands. The right platform can set guardrails for how teams design and manage integrations, so good practice becomes easier to repeat at scale. Look for a solution that lets you:

• Set one approved path into critical systems so teams and agents aren’t all accessing data and workflows in different ways
• Apply the same rules every time so security, compliance, and quality standards stay consistent from workflow to workflow
• Control sensitive access centrally so you can keep a precise record of who can call what, what data is being shared, and which actions are allowed
• Extend those guardrails into agent interactions so agents can work safely across systems and workflows

Using Agentforce MuleSoft as an example, businesses can securely develop, deploy, and manage API integrations at scale from one place. From there, API Manager provides teams a central place to manage their assets, while strong governance protocols help ensure APIs follow the right standards as they spread.

And now we’re extending this capability to the agentic layer as well. MuleSoft Agent Fabric brings governance across your entire agent network, including Agentforce and third-party solutions. This provides a framework for you to orchestrate, govern, and observe any agent, built anywhere, with centralised control over how those agents interact across workflows.

One of the fastest ways for integration to become expensive is to treat every new project like a brand-new problem. When every department, agent, and workflow demands a new architecture built from scratch, teams spend more time rebuilding than moving forward.

This is why the best integration platforms help you become a composable business by turning successful connections into reusable assets. Instead of re-solving the same problem for every department and agent use case, teams can build once and reuse what already works. Aside from saving time and cutting rework, this also makes it easier to stay consistent as you scale.

Using Agentforce MuleSoft as an example, teams can build cloud integrations and APIs, then publish those assets directly through Anypoint Exchange so teams, departments and other businesses can reuse them across future projects instead of starting from scratch.

On top of giving teams a head start, this repeatability also creates a consistent baseline for agentic AI. Agents can draw on the same trusted building blocks as the rest of the business, rather than creating new routes into systems whenever a new use case arises. This ensures fast delivery and keeps governance cleaner as your agentic enterprise scales.

Connecting humans and agents with context only creates business value when it removes friction from the work people do every day.

But businesses are still experiencing more friction than they’d like. As per our State of IT: AI and App Development Report, 41% of desk workers’ time is spent on low-value work. Meanwhile, sales reps spend 70% of their days on non-selling tasks, which is time they could be spending delivering exceptional customer experiences.

So, the question isn’t just whether a platform can integrate data. It’s whether that context can reach people, workflows, and agents at the right moment. A strong platform should help you:

• Bring connected data together into everyday tasks so people don’t have to context-switch between systems to find what they need
• Automate routine handoffs and updates so work keeps moving without constant manual input
• Create a smoother working relationship between humans and agents by giving both access to the same workflows, data, and approved actions

Agentforce MuleSoft supports this kind of smooth workflow automation with Flow Orchestration, which helps businesses orchestrate multi-step automated processes that bring humans, agents, and systems into the same flow of work.

Take a “where’s my order?” query as an example. With the right flow set up, Agentforce MuleSoft can instantly pull order, shipping, and customer data into Salesforce from the relevant systems. From there, an agent can use that context to explain the delay and recommend next steps, while Flow Orchestration simultaneously routes approvals through Slack to a shipping manager, updates the records, and moves the issue toward a resolution.

Suddenly, instead of people stitching the process together by hand, one connected workflow brings humans, agents, and systems into the same customer outcome. And as the number of agents grows, MuleSoft Agent Fabric extends that foundation by helping teams discover, orchestrate, govern, and observe agents across ecosystems.

Together, integration, governance, repeatability, and automation create the conditions for agentic AI to work in the real world, creating a foundation for your agentic enterprise to grow. To find out more, watch the full MuleSoft Keynote from our recent Agentforce World Tour in Sydney, free on Salesforce+.

For Panasonic Asia Pacific, the path to better customer experiences started with integration.

The business needed to get closer to end customers, but that meant connecting a wide mix of systems, data sources, and teams spread across the region. To deliver personalised customer experiences, they needed a strong foundation that could connect employees, systems, and customers in a single usable data flow.

To solve this, Panasonic partnered with Agentforce MuleSoft to build a foundation for unified customer experiences. The company now uses the platform to support 350 interfaces across systems, including Salesforce, SAP, ecommerce, and third-party logistics, giving teams a connected view of the information they need to deliver faster, more personalised customer experiences across the region.

The shift towards connectivity has made Panasonic faster and more agile. Today, the brand achieves a 37.2% API reuse rate (reducing the time spent building connections from scratch), 53% faster development speed, a 70% reduction in maintenance effort, and a 34% reduction in support tickets, among many other benefits.

The result is a connected ecosystem that brings Panasonic’s teams, data, and workflows together toward a single, unified goal. It helps teams work with more context, respond more efficiently, and build on connected systems rather than fighting through them.

Business AI conversations have shifted from ‘what if’ to ‘how fast’. But the goal isn’t speed alone; it’s the ability to create agents that can operate reliably inside real business processes, with the right context available at the right moment. What matters is whether your business has the foundation to turn that ambition into execution.

An integration platform brings your systems, data, workflows, and governance together so humans and agents can work from the same context. The right platform will give your teams and agents the reach, coordination, and guardrails they need to move from isolated use cases to full-scale automation.

Now, the only step left is to choose a solution that can help you reach those goals.

Agentforce MuleSoft can help you connect your systems, unify your workflows, and build an agentic foundation that helps humans, data, and agents collaborate in the flow of work. If you’d like to find out more, watch the full MuleSoft keynote to see how Salesforce is extending software data integration, orchestration, and governance into the agentic layer.

And, when you’re ready to get started, try Agentforce MuleSoft for free to see what a connected, agent-ready foundation can do for your business in 2026.