Everyone arriving at Dreamforce 2026 will hear about Agentforce. AI is genuinely reshaping how companies configure, price, and quote. But for the RevOps leaders managing the systems those AI agents will eventually run on, there's a harder question sitting under all of it: what is happening to CPQ right now, and what does the path forward actually look like?
This article answers the questions you're likely searching before you land in San Francisco. What's replacing Salesforce CPQ? How Agentforce fits into the revenue management conversation? And where to find a real conversation about all of it, away from the keynote theater?
When and Where Is Dreamforce 2026?
Dreamforce 2026 takes place the week of September 15 in San Francisco, at the Moscone Center. It's one of the largest enterprise software events in the world, drawing tens of thousands of in-person attendees and hundreds of thousands more joining virtually each year.
If you're flying in, the event footprint spreads across multiple Moscone halls, nearby hotels, and a network of side events, partner lounges, and off-site gatherings that often carry more substance than the main stage sessions.
One of those side events is the CPQ Recovery Lounge hosted by Zaela, running September 14-16 at Novela, a five-minute walk from Moscone Center. More on that below.
Is Salesforce Discontinuing CPQ?
The short answer: yes, effectively.
Salesforce has moved its legacy CPQ product (formerly Steelbrick) into maintenance mode. The platform is still supported, but it's no longer on the active development roadmap. Salesforce's position is clear: the future is Revenue Cloud Advanced (also known as RCA), not the CPQ product most enterprise teams have spent years configuring and customizing.
This puts a large number of organizations in an uncomfortable spot. They're running on a platform that will stop improving, while facing pressure to evaluate a successor that requires meaningful migration work, and making that decision in the middle of a broader Agentforce build-out that's demanding time and attention from the same teams.
It's a real problem. And it's the reason the CPQ conversation at Dreamforce 2026 is more urgent than it's been in years.
What Is Replacing CPQ in Salesforce?
Salesforce's answer is Revenue Cloud Advanced, the company's next-generation revenue management platform. Revenue Cloud Advanced consolidates quoting, contracts, billing, and revenue lifecycle management into one platform, with native CRM Data Cloud integration and Agentforce compatibility built in.
For companies already deep in the Salesforce ecosystem, Revenue Cloud Advanced is the logical successor on paper. In practice, migrating from Salesforce CPQ to Revenue Cloud Advanced is not a simple upgrade. It's a rearchitecting exercise. Custom rules, product catalogs, approval workflows, and pricing logic built on the old CPQ framework don't move cleanly. Organizations that attempt it without clear process documentation and governance first tend to recreate the same problems in a newer interface.
There's also a parallel path worth understanding. ServiceNow CPQ, built by the founder of BigMachines and Logik.ai, positions itself as a composable alternative: one that works alongside your existing CRM and systems of record without forcing a full rip-and-replace. If you're managing Salesforce CPQ or ARM (Automated Revenue Management) and it's breaking, ServiceNow CPQ is the option that's drawing the most serious attention from enterprise RevOps leaders right now.
Both paths will be part of the conversation at Dreamforce 2026. The right one depends on your architecture, your organization's tolerance for migration risk, and how much of your CPQ complexity is actually documented.
What Is Revenue Cloud? What Is Revenue Cloud Advanced?
Revenue Cloud is Salesforce's umbrella for the commercial and billing capabilities sitting above the core CRM. It includes quoting, product configuration, contracts, and billing, all designed to work within the Salesforce platform.
Revenue Cloud Advanced is the next iteration: a rebuilt revenue management architecture that adds AI-native capabilities, Agentforce agent orchestration, more flexible pricing models, and tighter integration with Salesforce's Data Cloud. It's built for companies that need to handle complex revenue structures, subscription billing, usage-based pricing, and CPQ migration from older platforms.
If you're currently on Salesforce CPQ and evaluating what's next, Revenue Cloud Advanced is the option Salesforce will recommend. The question to ask before committing is whether your current configuration logic, product rules, and pricing models are documented well enough to migrate accurately, and whether your team has the bandwidth to manage that work alongside an Agentforce rollout.
As we've written about in our CPQ governance playbook, companies without strong centralized CPQ controls lose up to 5% of profit margin through inconsistent discounting and misconfigured orders. That problem doesn't disappear in a migration. It travels with you unless you solve it before you move.
How Agentforce Is Changing Revenue Management
Agentforce is Salesforce's framework for deploying AI agents across the revenue cycle, from lead qualification to quoting to post-sale service. By 2028, Gartner estimates that 90% of B2B buying interactions will be mediated by AI agents. Salesforce is building toward that reality, and Agentforce is the bet.
For revenue management, the implications are real but still developing. AI agents can accelerate quote generation, flag configuration errors before they reach the customer, and help route approvals faster. The value is in faster, better-validated quoting, not in removing human judgment from decisions that matter.
The catch is that Agentforce requires clean data, documented workflows, and integrated systems to work. An AI agent running on top of broken quoting logic, disconnected pricing data, or siloed approval flows won't fix those problems. It will automate them. Research consistently shows that over 80% of AI initiatives fail when the underlying processes and data haven't been systematized first.
The organizations getting the most out of Agentforce for revenue management are the ones that treated CPQ modernization as a process exercise before it became a technology one. They documented configuration rules. They built governance. They connected CPQ to CRM, ERP, and billing so the data could actually flow. That's the architecture that makes AI-driven selling possible, and it has to come before the agents, not after.
CPQ Migration: What to Know Before You Move
Whether you're evaluating Revenue Cloud Advanced, ServiceNow CPQ, or another path, CPQ migration decisions made under Dreamforce urgency tend to be ones organizations spend years unwinding.
A few things worth knowing before you move:
Your complexity is probably underdocumented.
The pricing rules, configuration constraints, and approval flows that make your CPQ work live partly in the system and partly in the heads of the people who set it up. Before any migration, the most useful exercise is mapping exactly where a quote goes after it leaves CRM, and what breaks at each handoff. That's the question that exposes the real integration gaps, and it's the one most organizations skip.
Composable beats monolithic for most complex environments.
If your products are configurable, your pricing is customer-specific, or your quoting runs across multiple channels and geographies, a headless CPQ architecture that decouples configuration logic from presentation layers gives you more flexibility with less risk. The logic runs once and powers every channel that consumes it. That's the revenue architecture decision, not just a technology one.
The 5% threshold rule.
Before automating configuration exceptions, a useful filter is: only build automated handling for exception types that appear in more than 5% of transaction volume. Everything below that threshold should be handled manually and monitored, not automated into the system where it creates maintenance overhead.
Integration is what makes CPQ valuable.
CPQ delivers value in proportion to how well it's integrated across the stack. Configuration rules that reflect real product constraints from engineering and inventory. Pricing that reflects actual cost structure. Order handoff to ERP without rekeying. CPQ as a customer experience driver only works when every system downstream can actually execute on what the quote promised.
What CPQ Events Are Happening at Dreamforce 2026?
The CPQ conversation at Dreamforce 2026 isn't happening primarily on the main stage. It's happening in the spaces where operators can speak honestly about what's working and what isn't.
The CPQ Recovery Lounge, hosted by Zaelab and ServiceNow at Novela (662 Mission Street, San Francisco), runs September 14-16, 2026. It's designed specifically for RevOps directors and above who are managing quoting challenges, evaluating CPQ migration options, or trying to understand how Revenue Cloud Advanced and ServiceNow CPQ compare in practice.
The agenda includes:
- Monday, September 14 (6:00-9:00 PM): Opening night at Novela, with cocktails, chef-made bites, and off-the-record conversations with CPQ leaders and peers.
- Tuesday, September 15 (12:30-1:30 PM): The CPQ Therapy Session, hosted by Zaelab CCO Alex Bell and Chris Shutts (Head of CPQ at ServiceNow and founder of BigMachines and Logik.ai). An honest conversation about where the CPQ market is, what's next, and why companies are moving to ServiceNow.
- Wednesday, September 16 (2:00-4:30 PM): High Tea, High Spirits, a closing reception where Chris Shutts will share a direct read on the CPQ market before Dreamfest.
The lounge is free to attend, but access is reserved for directors and above in revenue, operations, sales, service, and technology. There's no vendor theater, no product pitch sessions: just architects, peers, and honest conversation about quoting.
Register for the CPQ Recovery Lounge here.
The Revenue Management Conversation That Matters in 2026
The CPQ market is at a pivot point. Salesforce CPQ is moving toward end-of-life. Revenue Cloud Advanced is promising but requires real migration investment. Agentforce is reshaping what's possible for revenue management, but only for organizations whose data and processes are ready for it. And ServiceNow CPQ is presenting itself as the composable, migration-friendly alternative for companies that can't afford a full rip-and-replace.
None of this resolves cleanly in a Dreamforce week. But understanding the landscape before you land is the difference between productive conversations and being sold to.
As we've explored in our customer-to-cash framework, the gap between what any individual platform can do and what a connected revenue engine requires is always an orchestration problem. The platforms are ready. The question is whether the integration connecting them has been built.
If you're in San Francisco for Dreamforce 2026 and want a real conversation about CPQ modernization, revenue management, and what comes after Salesforce CPQ, the CPQ Recovery Lounge is where that conversation is happening.
About Zaelab
Zaelab is a digital consultancy for complex enterprises modernizing customer experience and revenue operations. Zaelab aligns commerce, sales, service, and operations around how customers buy, engage, and expand. By replacing fragmented tools with a unified revenue engine, Zaelab creates a more connected experience across every touchpoint. The result is faster value, stronger lifecycle performance, simpler operations, better customer experiences, and more revenue across the business. Let’s connect.
