Salesforce Remains A Favorite Among Cloud Stocks In 2017

Salesforce.com, inc. CRM launched Einstein, an artificial intelligence platform, for general availability Tuesday.

“Einstein is clearly becoming a more important lever for SaaS differentiation” and could “accelerate multi-cloud adoption and support continued large-deal momentum,” Pacific Crest’s Brent Bracelin said in a note.

Bracelin maintains an Overweight rating on the company, with a price target of $95.

Power Of Einstein

The kickoff event demonstrated how Einstein could optimize inventory management and lead-to-cash time. The event also highlighted “the power of the salesforce's connected clouds, since Einstein can leverage data across all of them,” Bracelin said. Einstein represents a “key differentiating asset” for salesforce and should enable the company to sustain its momentum in large deals, according to the Pacific Crest note. 

Combination Of Einstein And Watson

The analyst commented that the combination of Einstein with International Business Machines Corp IBM's Watson would leverage different types of data and “could be powerful.”

While Einstein leveraged a large data set of individuals, Watson specialized in industries and both structured and unstructured data, Bracelin said. “The combination of two of the leading AI [Artificial Intelligence] platforms could give joint customers unparalleled insight into both industries and end users.”

Although salesforce’s shares had surged this year, the stock continued to be a “favorite cloud stock to own for 2017,” given that the company is among the world’s largest cloud application platforms, the analyst said.

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