Google and Salesforce.com said today at the Google I/O Developer Conference that their platforms as a service will talk with one another. Using the libraries provided by Force.com for Google App Engine, developers can now access the data stored in the Salesforce.com cloud from inside Google's App Engine. This is a powerful vote of confidence for Google's App Engine, because it allows developers building applications on Google's platform to access the Force.com platform that enterprise customers are comfortable using.
Google is trying to use App Engine as a way to draw corporate users to its other online products such as Google Docs or Enterprise search. In addition to being a platform where any developer can build scalable applications, App Engine is one way for corporate IT departments to easily customize the other Google products — something large corporate users could be keen on doing. Now that App Engine can access information stored in Force.com (which can include a company's Salesforce.com data), internal IT departments can add even more whiz-bang features to the programs they build on App Engine. It also marks the beginning of a world where multiple clouds talk to one another, and management of information between those clouds becomes more important.
App Engine competes against Microsoft's Azure and Rackspace's Mosso, rather than the basic infrastructure as a service offered by Amazon's Web Services.
