Google, Salesforce Form Cloud Partnership

Cloud-based software maker Salesforce.com said on Monday it has entered into a partnership with Google's cloud platform G Suite, to support its rapidly growing global customer base.

Alphabet's Google will offer eligible Salesforce customers G Suite licences at no additional cost for up to one year as part of the agreement, Salesforce said.

The partnership will also integrate Salesforce with Google Analytics, connecting sales, marketing and advertising data across both platforms.

Salesforce, which already has a tie-up with Amazon.com's web services unit AWS, named Google Cloud as a preferred public cloud provider and said it plans to use it to support the company's international expansion.

"Our partnership with Google represents the best of both worlds for our customers," said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.

AWS will also remain its preferred public cloud provider, Salesforce said at its annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco on Monday.

In 2016, Salesforce selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider.

The big three cloud vendors - AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud - benefit from the decision by many enterprises to build their applications using more than one cloud vendor.

Retailers Home Depot and Target, for example, told Reuters last month they use a combination of cloud providers.

© Thomson Reuters 2017