I was in the Bay Area today for a couple of meetings and had the chance to drop in on Salesforce.com's big "Tour de Force" event in Santa Clara.  I caught most of the keynote program and got to hear about the closer ties between Google and Salesforce direct from the horse's mouth as it were.  More here and here.

First off, this was a very well attended event so congrats to the Salesforce team for a great gathering.  Also appreciate the free lunch and the fire alarm going off for a few minutes was an added benefit.

That said and the reason for the title to this post is the increasing focus on how cloud/on-demand/self-service approaches to software delivery and consumption for the enterprise continue to evolve.  Two of the leading companies that have embraced the "no software" mantra – Salesforce and Google (Gears doesn't count, does it?) have further simplified the integration between their platforms.

There were a few additional profiles of companies using or building on the Force.com platform including ERP company CODA and more great stage time for Narinder Singh of Appirio.  Here's his post on it.  Lots of goodness about how fast, easy, and smart the approach is and the value of the Force.com platform (getting the point yet? [Sales]force.com is a platform company not just a CRM application company].  This left me wondering about the broader issue of integration for [Sales]force.com  Sure, Force.com represents a loaded up development platform but what if I want to connect to a legacy ERP system or connect my new Force.com enabled Coda ERP to my customers or partners?  How do I handle on-boarding, custom workflow, and change management?  The cloud is cool but the terra firma of the past (on-premise enterprise systems) cannot be ignored. 

As the clouds gather and companies like [Sales]force.com, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft vie for the top position, integration must be a key consideration including to both legacy systems and to each other.  Otherwise, we'll end up with just another closed approach to integration – keep it all on the same platform and integration isn't a problem. Isn't that what we are trying to avoid this time around?