Salesforce joins Google for more cloud morphing

The clouds keep morphing into each other, creating megaclouds that are being positioned to spark innovation and offer businesses new ways to interact with customers. This morning, at an event in New York, salesforce.com will announce a new connection between the Force.com development platform and Google's App Engine.

Think of it as a marriage of the business data on the force.com platform with the consumer and social-centric apps that are being developed on Google's engine. Noting that interactive games are among the most popular apps built on Google's engine, Salesforce is highlighting the example of Harrah's Casino and an interactive game built into customer loyalty applications. If a customer, for example, comes to the Web site to browse for events, the visit could be tied to a game tied to the casino's royalty program and a chance to win points toward prizes.

Ultimately, it's up to the developers' imaginations to come up with new apps that link the vast amount of information on force.com with the tools on Google's App Engine. Salesforce and Google have had an ongoing and growing relationship over the years, starting with joint charitable work in 2003 and building up to salesforce customers using Google AdWords and Google Apps.

But salesforce, which recently reported solid quarterly earnings at a time when many tech companies are issuing financial warnings, has been on a bit of a roll since the recent Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. There, the company announced partnerships with Facebook and Amazon as ways to spark more app development and also announced force.com Sites, which enables the building and hosting of Web pages built on apps and data within salesforce