Google Cloud Platform will be integrated with Salesforce tools. Image: g0df4ther/Shutterstock
A new strategic partnership has been announced as this year’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco begins.
The competition in the cloud is fierce, and this latest news from Salesforce and Google is one of the highest-profile deals yet.
Yesterday (6 November), Google and Salesforce unveiled plans to integrate Google’s G Suite with Salesforce’s core platform, as well as an integration of Google Analytics and Salesforce’s marketing software, and a general mutual commitment to use each other’s products going forward.
Salesforce also said it plans to use Google Cloud Platform for its core services and has named it as its preferred public cloud provider to support the company’s growing customer base.
The best of both worlds
Marc Benioff, CEO and chair of Salesforce, said: “Our partnership with Google represents the best of both worlds for our customers.
“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.”
Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene described the new partnership as “natural”, and “a big win for our customers and partners”.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice-president of ads and commerce at Google, added: “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.”
Multi-cloud approach
In May 2016, Salesforce announced that Amazon Web Services was its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider, but this new deal suggests that it will be moving parts of its business to Google’s rival cloud offering over the next while.
Ryan Aytay, executive vice-president of business development and strategic accounts at Salesforce, told Forbes that the company would still follow a “multi-cloud” strategy in terms of working with multiple vendors, but that the search giant was one of Salesforce’s five biggest customers.
In terms of analytics, Constellation Research analyst Ray Wang told TechCrunch that this is about Salesforce fighting with Adobe for its analytics business. Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Cloud are both rivals for similar Salesforce tools, so it seems that the latter is hoping Google will boost this element of its business.
Eligible Salesforce customers that are new to Google’s productivity and collaboration services will be able to use G Suite at no charge for up to a year, and customers of both platforms will ostensibly be able to “gain new consumer insights so they can deliver the most relevant experience at the right moment”.
Integrations between Salesforce Lightning and Quip, and Gmail, Hangouts Meet, Google Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sheets could see this partnership signalling a major shift for enterprise-level cloud solutions.
Google Cloud Platform will be integrated with Salesforce tools. Image: g0df4ther/Shutterstock
