Dynamics CRM Faces New Challenges from Saleforce-Google Alliance

TechCrunch.com is reporting details of a Google and Salesforce integration that makes Google’s enterprise applications such as Google Docs available within the SalesForce.com online CRM offering. Salesforce.com made the formal announcement on its own blog today.

Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff is quoted by TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld as identifying Microsoft’s Office and Dynamics CRM offering as a primary target of this partnership: “You’ve seen what we have been doing is slowly integrating all our services with theirs. Certainly the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which makes Google my best friend. I have spoken with a lot of customers who want to get off of Microsoft Word.”

The Google apps embedded within Saleforce.com’s online CRM tools allow the viewing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from within the browser. In addition, Google’s web-based apps such as GTalk, GMail and Google Calendar will be integrated for instant messaging, email integration (for customer tracking), and managing the dates of sales events and marketing campaigns.

Microsoft’s Dynamics offerings benefit greatly from workflows that incorporate enterprise data and features into Outlook and other Office desktop apps. At Convergence 2008 in