Salesforce, Google Cloud Platform form integration, global infrastructure partnership

Salesforce said it plans to use Google Cloud Platform to expand globally and integrate its customer relationship tools with G Suite and Google Analytics.

The news, outlined at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, is also notable because Google is offering eligible Salesforce customers company G Suite licenses for no cost for a year.

Salesforce already has a tight partnership with Amazon Web Services and said it will move more infrastructure to AWS. The Google Cloud partnership gives Salesforce multi-cloud options as well as analytics ties. Salesforce named AWS its preferred infrastructure provider in 2016. Microsoft and Salesforce are also partners and sometimes frenemies.

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Under the Google Cloud-Salesforce partnership:

• Salesforce named Google Cloud as a preferred cloud provider. Salesforce will use core Google Cloud Platform services for international infrastructure.
• G Suite and Salesforce's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform will be integrated for collaboration tools and Salesforce Lightning.
• Salesforce's Quip will tie into Gmail, Hangouts and Google Calendar as well as other services. Quip's Live Apps will be embedded with Google Drive and Google Calendar. With Hangout integration, customer account details and information can be used from Salesforce CRM directly.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360 integration for one dashboard. Salesforce Sales Cloud will also integrate.

For marketers the integration of Salesforce with Google Analytics will enable advertising data to be connected to customer information to better track leads and ad spend returns.

Google will use Salesforce as its preferred CRM provider. Salesforce in turn will use G Suite as its email and productivity vendor.

Salesforce said several integrations with G Suite are out, but deeper connections will launch in 2018. Quip Live Apps integration will Google Drive will be available in the first half of 2018 as will Google Analytics 360 and Salesforce combinations.

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