News
        
        Google and Salesforce Ratchet Up the CRM Competition
        
        
        
			- By Kurt Mackie
- April 14, 2008
        In a shot across Microsoft's bow, Google and Salesforce.com have  integrated some of their hosted solutions. 
Customers using Salesforce.com's customer relationship  management (CRM) solution now have access to the Google Apps office  productivity suite within the Salesforce.com platform. The new combined  solution is called "Salesforce.com for  Google Apps." It's available today for free to Salesforce.com  customers.
This integrated solution now squares off with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online,  Microsoft's own hosted platform. Dynamics CRM Online is already integrated with  Microsoft Office productivity suite applications, including the Microsoft  Outlook scheduler and e-mail program. 
A New York Times story today quoted Microsoft's CRM General Manager Brad Wilson, who indicated  that the Google-Salesforce.com integration just "validates"  Microsoft's approach.
"Salesforce has belatedly recognized that it is  important to link CRM apps to productivity tools," Wilson added, according to the Times' account, titled "Google and  Salesforce Join to Fight Microsoft."
Salesforce.com's CRM application integrates with Google  App's calendar, e-mail and instant messaging applications. Users can have their  e-mail activity automatically tracked within Salesforce.com's CRM application,  preserving communications associated with sales activities. Documents and  proposals can be shared using the collaborative aspects of Google Apps.
Sometime in the summer of this year, Salesforce.com plans to  offer a supported version of Google Apps along with a supported version of  Salesforce.com for $10 per user per month, according to an online presentation  given by Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce.com. The presentation,  officially unveiling the new integrated application, was available on  Salesforce.com's home page.
Benioff said that Salesforce.com customers have been  requesting integration of Google's applications, such as its mapping  capability, since as early as 2006. He added that the "standard bearers of  the industry" have not come forward to meet such demands.
Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and CEO, also provided  comments during the official Google-Salesforce.com announcement. He added some context,  describing how "cloud computing" is supplanting "the old model  that all of us grew up with." He noted that while the  software-as-a-service concept has been worked on for more than 20 years,  "we now know what it takes to build this next generation of services."
Salesforce.com -- founded nine years ago -- has been at the  forefront of this cloud computing effort, Schmidt added.
"They figured out first with Salesforce automation, and  now with the broader platform play, how to actually self-service and even do  the traditional service level agreement," he said. "That model is the  defining model of the cloud computing age because it's how people will make  money."
Schmidt emphasized a need to figure out a business model for  cloud computing to make it work. 
At least one observer sees cloud computing -- and the  Google-Salesforce.com announcement -- as being a disruptive technology factor  for Microsoft. 
"We continue to believe that the transition to 'cloud  computing' represents classic technology disruption and that Microsoft and  other PC- and enterprise software companies will ultimately be in a challenging  spot," stated blogger Henry  Blodget. 
Blodget is the one-time Wall Street analyst who gained  infamy for his too favorable predictions about .com Internet companies in the  1990s. The term "disruptive technology" is attributed to Clayton  Christensen in the book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," and refers to  technology that destroys the business models of entrenched industries.    
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
            
        
        
                
                    About the Author
                    
                
                    
                    Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.