On-demand CRM vendor Salesforce.com announced a partnership with Google to allow its Force.com platform as a service (PaaS) to the Google App Engine application, Google’s own cloud-based application development platform. The partnership gives Salesforce developers native access to Google’s distributed storage system, Bigtable and allows Google App Engine developers access to the Salesforce platform.

The partnership allows Salesforce.com developers to talk to applications built using the programming language Python. Google and Salesforce teamed up in June of this year, when the companies announced the release of the Force.com Tool for Google APIs, which allowed developers using the Force.com platform to access the data in Google Apps.

“We think that in economic times like these, the advantages of the cloud computing option make more sense,” says Salesforce senior director of platform product marketing, Ariel Kelman. “You get fast results, no capital expenditure, and low risk. Kelman says these advantages particularly benefit small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

“When we talk to our customers in the SMB space, these companies are really looking to leverage the technology investment in these scalable platforms,” he says. “The ability for them to take their ideas and run them on a world-wide, secure infrastructure is a huge win,” Kelman says.

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