04/14/2008

Salesforce and Google have allied to offer a cloud computing based offering that combines Google Apps with Salesforce's suite of CRM applications. Salesforce for Google Apps also uses the Force.com Platform and Google's open APIs, opening up development opportunities for developers and partners.

ebizQ received the following:

"Google and salesforce.com have always had similar models and philosophies about delivering innovations made possible by the Internet," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "Salesforce.com was a pioneer in Software-as-a-Service and a year ago we joined them in this mission to bring the benefits of cloud computing to businesses of all types. Together, we are making more applications and services available online so customers can focus on building their core business rather than the applications that support it."

"Salesforce.com is thrilled to be offering Google Apps integrated with our Salesforce applications and Force.com Platform-as-a-Service to the millions of businesses looking to manage their entire office in the cloud," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "The combination of our leading CRM applications and Google's business productivity applications pushes forward the transformation of the industry to cloud computing. The end of software is here."

"Since the launch of Google Apps a year ago, we have been following a trail blazed by salesforce.com and delivering cloud computing to business of all sizes," said Dave Girouard, Google vice president and general manager of Enterprise. "In addition to providing services to hundreds of thousands of customers, we have witnessed firsthand the benefits of the cloud: salesforce.com was one of the first Google Apps customers, and Salesforce has been an invaluable tool in growing Google's business."

Salesforce.com and Google -- Cloud Computing for the Enterprise

Both salesforce.com and Google have altered the software landscape by delivering SaaS applications, for CRM and productivity respectively, over the Internet. Today, this shift in the technology industry is being referred to as cloud computing, and salesforce.com and Google are well poised to deliver it to the enterprise. In June 2007, salesforce.com and Google launched Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords(TM), which has become a valuable tool for thousands of businesses by encapsulating every element of the customer life-cycle -- advertising, lead generation, sales, and customer support -- in one solution. In today's announcement, salesforce.com and Google are expanding their strategic alliance and delivering a second joint product to enable companies of all sizes to achieve success in cloud computing -- Salesforce for Google Apps.

Salesforce for Google Apps

Salesforce for Google Apps is a simple, yet powerful combination of essential applications for business productivity (email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging) and CRM (sales, marketing, service and support, partners) that enables an entirely new way for business professionals to communicate, collaborate, and work together in real time over the Web. Salesforce for Google Apps offers a complete way for businesses to harness the power of cloud computing without the cost and complexity of managing hardware or software infrastructure. Salesforce for Google Apps includes:

-- Salesforce and Gmail(TM) - Businesses can now easily send, receive and store email communication, keeping a complete record of customer interactions for better sales execution and improved customer satisfaction.

-- Salesforce and Google Docs(TM) - Create, manage, and share online Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Presentations within your sales organization, marketing group, or support team for instant collaboration.

-- Salesforce and Google Talk(TM) - Instantly communicate with colleagues or customers from Salesforce and optionally attach Google Talk conversations to customer or prospect records stored in Salesforce.

-- Salesforce and Google Calendar(TM) - Expose sales tasks and marketing campaigns from Salesforce on Google Calendar. Built by Appirio, this application is one example of a new category of partner extensions to Salesforce for Google Apps.

"Salesforce.com and Google have changed the game again. This is, hands down, the best example of the consumerization of the enterprise. This is revolutionizing the way people work," said Sheryl Kingstone of the Yankee Group.

"The combined offering from salesforce.com and Google brings together the best in enterprise CRM and productivity applications, all delivered over the Internet. Salesforce for Google Apps enables us to extend our company's SaaS strategy even further," said Doug Menefee, CIO of The Schumacher Group.

"While salesforce.com has always enabled us to work easily with client desktop productivity tools, we love that we now have the freedom to run our office in the cloud," said Prasan Vyas of UST Global.

Force.com and Google Platform -- Delivering Success to Partners and Developers

Salesforce.com and Google's alliance has created the world's largest cloud computing platform for building and running applications. The Force.com Platform-as-a-Service encompasses a complete feature set for the creation of business applications and Google's open APIs enable integration and extension of the applications in Google Apps. The integration of the two creates many new opportunities for developers and partners to build and run business applications that help customers run their entire business smarter in the cloud. Today, applications like sales quote generation and business forecasting are now easy to build and test, and can be deployed by customers with just a few clicks via the AppExchange.

Appirio and Astadia are the first companies to take advantage of these new development opportunities made possible through the Google and salesforce.com partnership. Each company has developed several applications that enhance Salesforce for Google Apps, and all of these applications are available today in a newly created AppExchange category, Google Apps, at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/category_list.jsp?NavCode__c=a0130000006 P6IoAAK-5.