Salesforce brings in Google Docs

Salesforce will make a basic version of Google Docs available to all subscribers

Salesforce.com has added Google Docs to its enterprise software package.

The web-based software firm will make a basic version of Google's online office suite available to all subscribers immediately. A premier version will be available for an extra charge later this summer.

"These are the industry's two leading products for cloud computing," Bruce Francis, vice president of corporate strategy at Salesforce, told vnunet.com. "These are the kinds of things that businesses use every day."

The addition of Google Docs is not the first time that the two companies have partnered.

Google offered its maps program on Salesforce.com's customer relationship management service in 2005, and the two companies began allowing users to place AdWords advertisements on their pages in 2006.

Salesforce hopes that the Google applications will be adopted and tweaked by users in a similar way to its Apex platform code.

Users will be able to embed the applications within their own Apex apps as well as develop Google Gadgets that contain data from the Salesforce service.

"This is a huge opportunity for a new generation of applications that can take these platforms and put them together," said Francis.

"We want to see thousands of these companies connecting the dots in ways that we did not even see."