Salesforce, Google join hands to push cloud computing business

The cloud computing industry has received some more muscle power with Salesforce.com tying up with Google to help their customers become more productive.

The agreement is being seen as a big win for Salesforce, which sells software under a subscription model as well as huge boost for Google’s cloud computing business.

The deal was announced at the Salesforce.com’s annual event, Dreamforce on Monday. Salesforce has also named Google Cloud as a preferred public cloud provider to support its growing global customer base. Salesforce plans to use Google Cloud Platform for its core services as part of the company’s international infrastructure expansion. The Salesforce.com clients will get the offerings free for a year. In addition, the companies will offer new integrations that connect Salesforce, with G Suite, Google’s productivity and team collaboration services.

Research firm IDC’s Larry Carvalho told BusinessLine that the partnership with Google will help Salesforce expand its geographical reach without investing a lot of money. “Google has something that Salesforce needs like the search, visibility into customers. If you bring in insight into customers into Salesforce, the CRM product becomes much more valuable for the clients. Microsoft has LinkedIn to do that and hence Salesforce needed someone like Google.”

The advantage for Google from this alliance will be access to Salesforce customers by selling their G-Suite to all of the customers. Salesforce is giving its customers a year of G Suite free of cost. If they tie their G Suite with Salesforce with a common interface, it will be a win-win partnership for both, Carvalho said.

The companies will also deeply integrate Salesforce with Google Analytics, seamlessly connecting sales, marketing and advertising data across Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360, for the first time. It will help customers gain new consumer insights whether that’s talking to a sales person, opening an email, visiting a website, clicking an ad, or searching on Google.

“Our partnership with Google represents the best of both worlds for our customers,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “There has never been an easier way for companies to run their entire business in the cloud — from productivity apps, email and analytics, to sales, service and marketing apps, this partnership will help make our customers smarter and more productive.”

“This partnership is natural; Salesforce CRM and G Suite together will let teams work productively. Our up-to-a-year at no cost offer makes it possible for eligible Salesforce customers to experience G Suite’s transformative impact,” said Diane Greene, CEO, Google Cloud.

“Google and Salesforce are coming together to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing our customers-connecting the insights in their CRM with the rich data in their analytics,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP of Ads and Commerce, Google.

The writer is in San Francisco at the invitation of Salesforce.com