It was by a year and a half ago when I had a chance to listen to Marc Benioff talk about how his company’s software would be integrating with Google to supply a mashup designed to allow companies to better track their Google advertising. Using the services together, organizations would be able to utilize the CRM portion of the software to track where customers came from: which ad, which keyword, which landing page, etc. The matter was so crucial, I made the write-up a High Priority! column in the September 2006 issue of [Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine].

The two companies have decided to take the collaboration one step further and, as a aftereffect, you will now be able to purchase Google Applications via Salesforce.com, and there will be tighter integration amidst the two companies. For example, e-mails sent to customers via Google’s mail application will be connected to customer records in Salesforce.com.

While that collaboration is great,

there are still companies that nag about how to maintain protection when their vital corporate input is stored on the servers of another company.

Perhaps that move will manage to produce customers more comfortable with the hosted approach, as Google has a strong reputation and helps boost Salesforce.com’s credibility — not that the company really needed it, but having such a large partner would help anyone.

In my opinion, there are many companies that don’t want to distress about having idle employees whether their broadband provider or router fails.

I have to say that I really appreciate Marc Benioff as a spokesperson for Salesforce.com considering he calls them as he sees them. No longer having Tom Siebel to go after, Benioff has resorted to blasting Microsoft. whether you want a more specific example of what I mean, consider the memo put out by Benioff in November of 2005…

Orginal post by Top Tech News