GoogleGazer

The revolution. It is a-coming.

The “Google Watch” blog discusses how Saleforce.com is taking advantage of Google’s architecture so current Salesforce.com customers have been able for some time to directly work with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and the Google Docs spreadsheet, presentations and word processing applications from within the Salesforce.com platform.

Yesterday, June 23, the companies extended that collaboration theme to Salesforce.com developers with a tie between Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs, which lets programmers leverage the Google Data APIs within their applications and projects on Force.com.

Now Force.com programmers can directly call the Google Data APIs to plug any of the Google Apps functionality directly into the Force.com applications and share data and content between Salesforce.com’s and Google’s cloud computing platforms, and they can exchange data.

Clint Boulton quoted Ariel Kelman of SalesForce.com as providing the following example:

Let’s say a salesperson wants to share a candidate list with an outside recruiter but not give the recruiter full access to the application. The salesperson can e-mail the recruiter a Google spreadsheet from Google Docs.

As the salesperson makes changes in Force.com through the Google Data APIs, it will update the candidate list on the spreadsheet. So, the recruiter can see those changes and interact with those changes.

“We can read and write information between our database and Google Docs,” Kelman confirmed, and continued:

What we’re trying to do is make it easier for developers to build applications that run in the cloud and as all of these cloud computing platforms proliferate, the more that vendors can do to allow developers to have access to the different computing platforms, the easier it becomes.

In effect, it’s no different than what Microsoft did when it partnered with SAP and Business Objects in business intelligence … back in the day to bolster its on-premises software functionality.”

Boulton correctly observed that partnering is something that Microsoft has been doing for years. Small and large companies partner with Microsoft to benefit from Microsoft’s cachet, imprimatur, and the free advertising, while Microsoft benefits by having its products become part of the heart and soul of thousands of applications, most of them business-oriented.

As the GoogleGazer reported earlier, Google is enticing developers to use its tools, its cloud-hosting, and its APIs and make them their own for development of Software As A Service ( SAAS) applications, which is where Google believes that the future lies. Google is making an astonishingly large amount of code available as Open Source having released over a million lines of code in that form already. Just look at their Open Source website.

(Though very late to the game, Microsoft has also (somewhat reluctantly) embraced Open Source of late. See this example, Microsoft’s Open Source website and CodePlex, Microsoft’s hosting site for Open Source.)

Those of us barely able to remember when once we had hair can hark back to the late ’80s and early ’90s. Microsoft was then desperately trying to see its tools adopted by the development communities, and especially the corporate developers, who were then using SyBase, PowerBuilder and other mostly forgotten tool. They regarded Microsoft as a purveyor of “toy” development tools for sissies. To change that perception, Microsoft hired a staff of evangelists, and spared no expense to pamper and woo developers of all stripes, cleverly realizing that by controlling developers they would control the desktop and continue their hegemony. It took a few years, but the effort was largely successful, especially for corporate development The effort survives, in much more modest form, as Microsoft Developer Network, as the battle seemed substantially won.

No so fast.

Google is now battling Microsoft on many fronts, and developers are becoming a prime battleground. Like the Microsoft of old, Google is pampering developers at conferences, and with tee shirts and food. However, its commitment to Open Source and non-proprietary open industry standards are perhaps its most potent weapons. For years, enterprises have chaffed at the heavy “taxes” they need to pay Microsoft for each desktop, primarily in the form of licenses for Windows, Office, and Exchange, but also in supporting armies of technicians that need to constantly upgrade those desktops to work with the latest release of this or that Microsoft upgrade.

There is a rebellion underfoot, and Microsoft’s heavy-handed attempts to “force” the adoption of Vista have only fanned the flames of rebellion.

Technology is also on Google’s side. Improved and more universal Internet and really powerful cloud computing has clearly brought us back to the so-called “thin client” era, where most of the really good stuff happens on the server side. Mozilla’s Open Source FireFox 3.0 is also playing an important role. The upcoming near universal availability of the Internet browser on all cell phones, PDAs, and other devices and – finally – the move to high speed 3G and 4G cellphone technology are changing the paradigm once again.

Open Source, Cloud Computing, and Software as a Service (SAAS) are the future. Complex, proprietary, failure-prone desktops, with their heavy taxation burden to Microsoft represent the past.  A major paradigm shift is underway, and there will be winners and losers. Menlo Park’s Sand Hill Road venture capitalists are rubbing their hands in glee. Paradigm shifts create huge opportunities for start-ups to become billion dollar companies in a short time.

As James Otis famously said in the years just prior to the American Revolutionary War, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” And it’s rebellion against tyranny that fuels revolution. That’s been the American way now for well over 300 years.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, Google, Microsoft, SAAS Tagged: | 3G, 4G, CodePlex, development tools, Google, Google Data APIs, Microsoft, Open Source, PowerBuilder, SAAS, Salesforce.com, software as a service, SyBase