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Salesforce.com and Google have created a bridge between their companies’ cloud computing application development platforms that will let programmers pull data from either platform and use it to create richer, more useful applications.
The two companies plan to introduce Force.com for Google App Engine at a Cloudforce event in New York Dec. 8, Ariel Kelman, senior director of platform product marketing for Salesforce.com, told eWEEK. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Tom Stocky, director of product management at Google, will discuss the latest collaboration between the two companies at the event.
With the new integration, App Engine programmers will be able to add enterprise data from Force.com to their consumer-oriented applications for gaming or social networking. Conversely, Force.com programmers will be able to add social networking data and features from App Engine applications to their CRM applications.
“It’s about building applications where different parts of the application are being served by different cloud computing platforms,” Kelman said.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean applications created on Force.com will run on App Engine, or vice versa. Simply, Force.com for Google App Engine is a mashup of SAAS (software as a service) or cloud-based programming platforms, with Force.com on the enterprise data side and App Engine on the consumer side.
For example, Kelman showed eWEEK how Salesforce.com customer Harrah’s Entertainment, a major provider of branded casino entertainment, used code from a slot machine game application built on App Engine to reach into a customer loyalty database built on Force.com to sign customers up for an event.
When the next Harrah’s sales representative logs in and clicks on the customer name, he or she will see that the customer has qualified for an event. The idea is to make the site that runs on Force.com stickier and more interactive for users, using the fun gaming tool from App Engine, Kelman said.
In other examples, e-commerce applications from App Engine can be tied to order management and CRM databases that run on Force.com. App Engine also features an application called packagetrackr. Thanks to Force.com for Google App Engine, customers can log on to their Salesforce.com accounts and see orders and shipment status from packagetrackr.
More About Integration than Money
Google App Engine team member Peter Koomen offers more here.
Kelman admitted that from a financial standpoint, neither Salesforce.com nor Google stands to make a lot of money from this type of venture. Rather, the effort is about bridging the work of two distinct developer camps. Who knows where this will lead in the future? It’s impossible to say now.
What is clear is that Salesforce.com and Google believe this melding of two very different SAAS computing models represents the next frontier in the Web-based computing the industry has come to know as the cloud. Steve Gillmor has more along these lines in TechCrunch today.
In this paradigm, an alternative to the traditional on-premises model fostered by Microsoft, customers can procure business applications from Salesforce.com, social or e-commerce apps from Google App Engine or computing power from Amazon Web Services rather than managing and maintaining their own hardware and software in-house.
From a technical, what gets shared with whom standpoint, Force.com for Google App Engine lets programmers leverage the Python language from App Engine in a scalable cloud environment and interact directly with database, workflow and logic capabilities in Force.com.
The integration also forges Python libraries that, when placed on App Engine, allow App Engine applications to read and write to Force.com using the Force.com API. App Engine developers meanwhile get access to Force.com mobile, analytics, security and sharing models, user authentication, and multilanguage and currency support.
The Salesforce.com-Google integration is not the first of its kind, coming after Salesforce.com Nov. 4 began letting its 100,000 Force.com programmers use storage and computing capabilities from Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services to build Force.com apps, and Facebook APIs to build Force.com applications.
Previous Google-Salesforce.com integrations include Salesforce for Google AdWords, Salesforce for Google Apps, in which Salesforce customers can work with Google Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Docs from Force.com, and Force.com for Google Data APIs.