Salesforce.com and Google have announced they will jointly offer Google Apps integrated with Salesforce.com's CRM (customer relationship management) applications.
The companies announced today that Salesforce.com's customers will have the option of using versions of Google Apps, Gmail, Calendar, and Google Talk from within Salesforce.com.
An e-mail response from a customer can be appended to the customer information stored within Salesforce.com, meaning that all customer interaction can be accessed from a single place, for instance. That dynamic applies to Google Talk conversations and other applications, too.
This isn't a new function of Salesforce.com. The company has offered integration with Microsoft's Office and Outlook desktop applications previously. But this is the company's first foray into offering a more wide-ranging Web-based application package.
Salesforce.com says its customers requested integration with Google Apps through its online forum called Idea Exchange.
Salesforce.com has not ruled out making a similar deal with Microsoft for Office Live, the Microsoft's online complement to Office.
"Salesforce.com is open to working with a myriad of office applications. What made this possible is that Salesforce and Google...both deliver native Web applications," said Kraig Swensrud, vice president of Applications at Salesforce.com.
"We're looking to (Idea Exchange) for what people want us to build. People voted for Google Apps," he said. Swensrud expects that a "huge" percentage of Salesforce.com's customer base will be interested in the new feature.
Likewise, Google plans to work with other partners. "We're committed to advancing the Web as the platform and partners are key to our growth, whether it's a developer doing custom applications and gadgets, a company like Appirio making calendar sharing even easier, or Salesforce.com deeply integrating Google Apps into their CRM products," said Scott McMullan, Google Apps partner lead, Google Enterprise.
Salesforce.com won't charge for the integration with Google Apps. Existing customers will get it for no additional charge. So far, 10 Salesforce.com customers have tested the integration in a beta test mode, said Swensrud.
There is a profit motive here, however. The company will offer a service called Salesforce for Google Apps Supported that will include telephone support for end users, unified billing and provisioning, and additional application programming interfaces for a fee of $10 per user, per month.
