Today at the Santa Clara Tour de Force we are releasing the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs – a set of Apex libraries that makes connecting Google’s Docs, Sheets, Calendar and other tools with your Force.com apps simple and straightforward.  Now the capabilities and power of Google Apps are not only available and integrated for salesforce.com users, but also developers – letting them easily create new apps that combine the two systems.

Perhaps the most significant (and technically interesting!) aspect of the toolkit is that unlike the early Web 2.0 mashups that worked primarily by combining services within the browser via JavaScript, this toolkit works by literally connecting the clouds – all of the integration and interaction happens ‘in the cloud’ rather than on the client.  This is possible because of the increasingly rich capabilities of the Apex runtime within Force.com – and significant because these server side interactions can be much richer and robust than anything possible on the client.  Best of all, its remarkably easy to use – just a few lines of code will have your Force.com apps exchanging data with Google Apps in real time.  This is a new model for mashups, and one we think will become increasingly common.

You can learn more about the toolkit on our website, and in person at one of our upcoming Tour de Force events.  And as always we look forward to getting your feedback, and learning about what you have built.