Google and Salesforce Get Together for Business Applications

Salesforce, a provider of customer relationship management service, has signed an agreement with Google, which will have Google providing the Google Apps range of products as part of the Salesforce platform, reported Yahoo News.

According to Google, the move represents the company’s attempts at portraying Salesforce more as a software platform than a sales-force automation service.

Under the terms of the agreement, Google’s various tools, such as the spreadsheet, text editor, calendar, instant messaging and e-mail will not only work with Salesforce’s tools, but also be available through the same interface. Therefore, if an individual has a Gmail account, e-mails from the account can be sorted and saved as leads or to-do tasks in an appropriate component of the Salesforce application.

The agreement will also reportedly have third party applications designed for Salesforce’s AppExchange platform being integrated with Google Apps. AppExchange, according to Salesforce, is a facility that serves as a marketplace where add-on software is delivered through the Salesforce.com platform that uses the same APIs and database engine as the Salesforce application.

Since the two companies have a broad group of firms using their products, it is reported that the deal is likely to help cloud computing attract more business opportunities, which includes larger enterprises that have been open to the idea of software-as-a-service outside confined areas.

The deal is also expected to bring cloud computing to the forefront, with companies like ZoHo announcing multi-application offerings recently. Google also recently announced an intention to open its own platform to outside developers to deploy their own applications. Microsoft too is trying to foray into cloud computing. It introduced Duet in partnership with SAP in 2006.