The long-rumored collaboration between Salesforce.com and Google is expected to be made official through an announcement this Monday. What this partnership will do is integrate Google Apps with Salesforce.com’s CRM (customer relationship management) applications. To be more precise, it will include Google’s e-mail service, Gmail, chat service, Google Talk and Calendar.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, said, as quoted by PC World: “The combination of our leading CRM applications and Google’s business productivity applications pushes forward the transformation of the industry to cloud computing. The end of software is here.”

The decision was made at the customers’ request, Salesforce said, and so far Salesforce.com customers have had the chance to test the new integration through its beta version. Moreover, they will pay no additional charge for the service, the company said.

At the same time, Google confirmed its plans to collaborate with different partners in a statement prior to the announcement of this collaboration: “We’re committed to advancing the Web as the platform and partners are key to our growth,” said Scott McMullan, CNET News reports.

Salesforce.com’s CEO Mark Benioff said that through this partnership, it will be easier for businesses to use other services such as this as an alternative to Microsoft Office.

There are still a lot of things to be made before this integration will become fully secure and convince even the most skeptic clients, but things look promising.

So far, the two companies refused to make a confirmation on the latest rumors according to which Google allegedly further intended to buy Salesforce.

Salesforce.com is the global leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) and over 35,000 customers rely on it. Salesforce customers will have free access to the new services, and within a few months, the company is expected to unveil another version of the service that will include telephone support for end users, unified billing and provisioning for a $10 monthly fee.