Google, Salesforce join forces for business apps

Users of Salesforce.com’s online enterprise apps are about to get the option of using versions of Google’s spreadsheet, text editor, calendar, instant messaging, and e-mail tools that are tightly linked with the popular on-demand customer relationship management offering.

That means users will now be able to keep tabs on Gmail communication with their sales leads, create or load Google Docs from within the Salesforce interface, merge events scheduled from within Salesforce or in Google Calendar into one view, and so on.

Though the company has offered integration with Microsoft’s Office and Outlook desktop applications for some time now, the integration with Google’s web-based suite of applications will not only give the search giant a stronger foothold among business users, but also marks an important step forward towards so-called “cloud computing”.