12 Innovative Products For Your Business

CRM (customer relationship management) is an integrated information system used to plan, schedule, and control presale and postsale activities in an organization with the goal of improving long-term growth and profitability through a better understanding of customer behavior. And cloud computing refers to running applications within a network server or downloading the software from the network each time it's used. Salesforce.com CRM is often mentioned in sync when discussing cloud computing because it's set the bar for integrated CRM business applications.

Salesforce.com has been busy this year, including expanding its relationship with Google to include the Google App Engine development platform, extending its platform to host Web sites, and partnering with Amazon Web Services -- making Amazon's on-demand storage and computing services available from Force.com -- and Facebook, in order to bring cloud computing together by letting developers build applications on the Force.com platform that appear natively inside Facebook.

As more businesses make the leap onto the cloud as part of a cost-savings effort, Salesforce.com will likely continue rolling out partnership agreements with other companies in order to provide more seamless CRM integration.

Don't Miss: Running Your Business In The Cloud