The strategic partnership was announced by Salesforce at its annual Dreamforce conference this week. The initiative, described by Google as an effort to “bring the power of cloud to businesses globally,” includes the promotion of Google Cloud to Salesforce’s “preferred public cloud provider.”
Integrating collaboration
Teams from both companies will work directly so their products are compatible with each other. Integrations under development include plans to combine Salesforce with G Suite, connect Salesforce Lightning into Gmail and add Salesforce customer details directly into Hangouts meetings.
Salesforce and Google have announced a new strategic partnership
Salesforce
The wider aim is to develop a single cloud software platform that includes a full suite of productivity, collaboration and customer intelligence services. Data will flow seamlessly between Google and Salesforce products, helping companies to make the most from their data and identify new insights. According to the two companies, it will create “the only cloud-native collaboration platform of its kind.”
“Our partnership with Google represents the best of both worlds for our customers,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of 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.”
Actionable insights
The partnership aligns with Salesforce’s commitment to supporting the next industrial revolution, a key theme of its Dreamforce conference. The company’s refocusing around the cloud and IoT as more enterprises switch to modern IT platforms.
Combining its existing CRM and customer intelligence services with Google’s productivity platform gives both companies a stronger footing as the cloud wars heat up. Customers of either are now more likely to use the other for their customer management or collaboration needs.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce
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The partnership will help the firms to fend off competitors like Microsoft’s Office 365. It’ll also let customers obtain more value from their data by increasing the number of services that can access it.
“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, Google SVP of Ads and Commerce. “For the first time ever, our customers will be able to seamlessly connect what’s happening across sales, marketing and advertising, and take action across our ads platforms and Salesforce.”
Expanding infrastructure
As part of the joint commitment, Salesforce announced it will be using Google Cloud to host its core services in several international regions. It’s planning an infrastructure expansion that will now be based on Google’s platform.
For its part, Google said Salesforce is its “preferred CRM provider” which is already used by its teams. The arrangement appears to be a long-term strategic move that will benefit both firms and their customers, designed to increase public cloud adoption and support companies as they move data out of siloed on-premises resources. The first integrations are expected to arrive in 2018.
