Salesforce.com/GoogleApps v. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online/Office Live? Whew. More Than That.

Interesting article from PGreenblog:

Salesforce.com/GoogleApps v. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online/Office Live? Whew. More Than That.

As is everywhere you can imagine on the web today, the big discussion is the announcement today by salesforce.com and Google about the integration of Google Apps with salesforce.com's CRM services. Phil Wainwright wrote a whitepaper for the "event" that explains what's going on well:

Salesforce for Google Apps brings this effortless, non-invasive integration to life. The full suite of Google Apps – including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations), and Google Start Page – is instantly available to any Salesforce customer that chooses this option. Once activated, every component of Google Apps becomes an integral feature of the Salesforce environment, available as a natural part of the user’s working routine. Despite this organic fusion at the user interface, each application remains programmatically autonomous and can add new features or upgrades – such as extensions to Google Apps’ recently introduced offline working capabilities – without requiring any modification to the integration. Compare this approach, for example, to integrating Salesforce with Microsoft Outlook, which requires separate installation of a software download that must be reinstalled every time Outlook is upgraded to a new version.

Wainwright does an excellent blog posting on this today though I don't totally agree. I still think that the functionality of Google apps is nowhere near the functionality of Microsoft Office and I agree with his colleagues - in particular Joshua Greenbaum - that Google apps terms of service aren't conducive to corporate living. In fact, if you think about today's announcement on the face of it, let me ask you this. If Microsoft announced that they were integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with Office 2007 today, how excited would you be? Not that excited since it already is - and this move is aimed squarely at Microsoft I would say, wouldn't you? But there is something on a bigger stage that is being done here that might be even more meaningful in the long run. I have a whitepaper that I did for salesforce.com too that might or might not be released for this event - its on the vendors that are contending for what I call the New Desktop. This is part of a much bigger whitepaper that I also did for salesforce.com on "The New Desktop" and how it is transforming the traditional desktop to something very different than we've ever seen. Imagine a desktop that is no longer the specific PC capabilities to improve your personal productivity but instead, the desktop as a social platform that is aimed at real time collaboration and communication which, as a corollary feature, improves personal productivity. The platform for the new desktop extends to multiple devices - could be the PC or laptop or other mobile device - as Yankee Group calls them the Anytime, Anytime Consumers or Enterprises.. There are no winners as of yet, but there are contenders for sure - among them salesforce.com. I'll let you go to salesforce's site to get the white papers when they appear there and I'll be writing on the concepts in the near future in detail. Suffice to say, the battle to take Microsoft's space is not for the title of "Lord of the Personal Productivity Universe" particularly especially because of the current weaknesses of Google Apps. I like the idea that Rebecca Wetteman of Nucleus Research (probably the first thing I've ever liked from Nucleus for that matter) has which is that companies should take a "tiered approach" - some can use Excel, others the Google Apps spreadsheet. Regardless of the apparent purpose of the team-up, I do like the idea of this alliance and think its a good thing if Google's arrogance doesn't trip the whole thing up. Over the long run this is an important fight because it is a fight for the hearts and mind of the social customer (which can only benefit that customer) and will reveal over time which tools people will be using to engage each other and their paramour company choices as the 21st century advances. The battle for the New Desktop begins. I'll be both watching and participating. Help me shape the whole battle because when push comes to shove, its us as customers who need to make the decisions here - not salesforce/Google or Microsoft/Microsoft.