Salesforce-Google integration bolsters CRM, analytics functionality

The news of Salesforce adding another preferred public cloud for international expansion comes just months after Salesforce formed a similar partnership with AWS. The addition of Google Cloud is to address customer needs, according to Ryan Aytay, executive vice president for business development and strategic accounts for Salesforce.

“AWS continues to be an important part of our infrastructure, so nothing’s changing there,” Aytay said. “We’re just adding another preferred cloud and moving forward to address customer needs.”

Google and AWS are two of the three leaders in the cloud space, with the other being Microsoft’s Azure. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been outspoken about his abhorrence toward former partner Microsoft, so it’s unlikely Salesforce will be partnering with the Seattle-based company anytime soon.

The move toward Google could have been a response to customers’ demands, according to Hager, as AWS is costly when it comes to cloud storage.

“Just being able to have that option of Google storage instead of AWS is important; I had three clients this morning complaining about the cost of AWS,” Hager said. “If you’re storing a lot of documents on Salesforce, it can get expensive. So, integrating with Google is a nice option.”

There’s some potential overlap with the integrated products, especially between Salesforce’s Quip and Google’s G Suite, but Salesforce executives aren’t worried about the overlap, with Aytay saying internally at Salesforce the company has used both products.

Zhou can see the products coexisting, but there’s also some “friendly competition” between G Suite and Quip, with the Salesforce product being a good alternative for companies creating contracts or requests for proposal.

Several of the Salesforce-Google integrations are already in market, including Lightning for Gmail and integrations with Calendar and Google Drive, with deeper integrations rolling out in 2018, according to the press release. Quip Live Apps integration with Google Drive is expected to be generally available in the first half of 2018 for $25 per user, per month with any Quip Enterprise License. And the integrations between Salesforce and Google Analytics 360 are expected in the first half of 2018 at no additional cost to licensed customers.