Google LLC and Salesforce.com Inc. today announced a surprise partnership that makes the search giant’s cloud one of the customer relationship management company’s preferred cloud computing providers.

In particular, Salesforce will use the Google Cloud Platform to expand its international operations, at least initially. Google will also standardize its own operations on Salesforce’s software. And it’s offering Salesforce customers companywide G Suite licensees free for up to one year.

Moreover, Salesforce plans to integrate its marketing, sales and advertising data with Google’s G Suite productivity services, allowing their joint customers to get access to Salesforce data within Gmail, Google Sheets and other G Suite products. In particular, those customers will be able to integrate Salesforce’s marketing and sales software with Google Analytics 360, the paid version of its widely used free analytics service.

Today’s announcement follows by a year and a half Salesforce’s announced plans to move some of its online operations to Amazon Web Services Inc. data centers. Salesforce continues to operate its own data centers as well. Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff (pictured) told the Wall Street Journal that the Google Cloud deal involves a financial component but declined to disclose the terms.

The move is another acknowledgment that companies increasingly realize they need to use multiple clouds for various purposes and to offer their own customers multicloud computing options. Although AWS leads the cloud field by far, at least the key computing and storage infrastructure layer, Microsoft is rising fast and a group of others from Oracle Corp. to IBM Corp. is looking to make a much bigger splash.

The deal is also a sign of continued friction between Salesforce and Microsoft, whose Azure cloud computing service Salesforce still doesn’t use. The two have clashed as Microsoft has moved into customer relationship management, as well as over the acquisition by Microsoft of LinkedIn, which Salesforce had also made a run at and then asked European regulators to block the deal.

“I think it means the gloves are coming off on Salesforce versus Microsoft,” Marty Puranik, CEO of cloud hosting provider Atlantic.Net, told SiliconANGLE. “Salesforce is overtly prodding Microsoft, and either it feels it’s sufficiently strengthened or Microsoft is sufficiently weakened that it doesn’t have to respect the old guard from Redmond. It’s a gutsy move by Salesforce to snub Microsoft.”

Salesforce made the announcements at its annual Dreamforce conference for some 170,000 customers, software developers and partners in San Francisco this week. Earlier today, the company made a half-dozen or so announcements of more personalized versions of many of its core offerings, such as its Einstein artificial-intelligence software, its Trailhead learning system and its mobile app tools.

Google has remained far behind the cloud leaders, AWS and Azure, but it has been battling to get more large enterprise customers, especially on the strength of its analytics and machine learning services offered through its cloud. “We’ve been getting more and more requests from our customers,” Tariq Shaukat, Google Cloud’s president for partners and industry platforms, said in a press conference this afternoon.

Although the deal is a big win for Google, Salesforce took pains to say that it’s not moving away from Amazon. “We have a great relationship with Amazon and this changes nothing on that,” said Ryan Aytay, Salesforce’s executive vice president for business development and strategic accounts. “For the benefit of our customers, we find it necessary to have multiple preferred cloud partners.”

In particular, Salesforce’s cloud platform as a service offering, called Heroku, will keep using AWS, Aytay said.

Still, it’s apparent both companies view the deal as highly significant, trotting out both their chief executives for prepared remarks and in interviews with selected publications. “Our partnership with Google represents the best of both worlds for our customers,” said Benioff. For her part, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene emphasized that Salesforce’s core services will run on its cloud. “This will all be a big win for our customers and partners,” she said.

Some of the integrations, such as between G Suite and Salesforce Lightning for Gmail are already available. Others, such as integration of Salesforce’s document sharing service Quip, will be rolled out in the first half of next year.

Photo: Robert Hof