In a move seen as a “take that Microsoft” deal, Google and Salesforce padded out a current collaboration deal by integrating its Google Apps within Salesforce.
Salesforce clients have a little something extra with their morning CRM. The addition of Google Apps to Salesforce neatly tucks in Gmail and the other Google applications inside the software as a service business application.
Early buzz about this broader integration began when TechCrunch recently picked up on rumors about the expansion. Salesforce already had a Google AdWords management component in place as part of their previous dealings with Google, laying the groundwork for this newest announcement.
Any time Google pushes the productivity applications envelope, some people look at it as another not-so-kind push against Microsoft’s Office and its millions of installations. “Google Apps is quickly becoming a pain in Microsoft’s side,” Garett Rogers said at Googling Google, and he’s likely correct.
Though the formal announcement of the deal has yet to make an appearance, both Google and Salesforce published pages touting the new integration. The feature list for Salesforce users who found Google Apps along with the morning bowl of Lucky Charms looks like this:
- Automatically add Gmail communications to Salesforce for a record of customer interactions
- Chat with colleagues right from Salesforce – during sales or customer services calls
- Associate Google Docs to your sales data and collaborate with colleagues in real-time
- View your Salesforce meetings, marketing campaigns, and other business events inside Google Calendar
- Display sales and marketing dashboard components from Salesforce on your Google Start page
No one will mistake the feature set of Google Apps with Microsoft Office or Exchange just yet, and we are motivated to think a small to medium sized business using Office probably counts its Microsoft licenses as a business expense, lessening its cost impact.
Salesforce users probably tote laptop computers everywhere, making the need for Google Apps less critical – if Office is already installed, Apps in-the-cloud availability doesn’t really matter.
Salesforce does tout a few clients as Google Apps success stories currently. This is a good thing; the Office monolith will always need some competition to keep its developer teams on their toes. That’s where we see the real value of the Google Apps/Salesforce expansion.
