Google links to Salesforce.com cloud

Google and Salesforce.com have introduced a link between the two companies' cloud-computing services, to allow developers to create web applications by drawing upon both platforms.

Force.com for Google App Engine, announced at the Cloudforce conference on Monday, lets programmers draw on Force.com's enterprise-oriented features as well as on the more consumer-oriented capabilities of Google App Engine, the companies said.

For example, a gaming or social-networking application running on Google App Engine could use enterprise data such as customer relationship management (CRM) information, while a CRM application running on Force.com could pull information from a Google App Engine social-networking service.

As another example, a Google App Engine-based e-commerce application could be tied to order management and CRM databases running on Force.com, the companies said.

Cloud computing is a term that covers web-based applications running on remotely located computing facilities, which is also known as software as a service (SaaS).

Developers on the Google App Engine platform can use the Python language to interact directly with the database, workflow and logic capabilities of Force.com, and can also tap into Force.com's support for uprogramming ser authentication, multiple langauges and currency support.

Force.com developers, meanwhile, get native access to Google services such as Bigtable distributed storage. They can use Python libraries within App Engine to read and write to Force.com using the Force.com API.

The integration follows similar Force.com integration agreements for Amazon Web Services and Facebook in November.