Updated Thursday, May 29, 4:57 p.m.
Well, it’s official. the speculation is no longer speculation, but fact. Microsoft and Salesforce have confirmed their partnership.
Thursday, May 29, 11:08 a.m.
It’s sunny with a chance of partnership for Salesforce.com and Microsoft—the computing giants are said to be close to solidifying an agreement that would give users of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform access to Salesforce.com’s CRM tools.
Also reportedly in discussion is the potential integration of data from Salesforce products right into Microsoft Office, according to Bloomberg, which broke the story late last night.
The possible partnership has thrown some for a loop. Didn’t Microsoft sue Salesforce back in 2010 for patent infringement? And didn’t Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff once accuse Microsoft of “trying everything they can to stop the cloud because they want to hold on to their monopoly?” But as GigaOm cheekily noted, the pigs appear to be flying.
Whatever one thinks about the likely deal, if Salesforce apps do get certified to run on Azure, the information-sharing capabilities available to customers will increase exponentially and the cloud marketing landscape is in for another major shift.
Head exploding. #crm RT @jesus_hoyos: @Microsoft, @Salesforce Said to Discuss #Cloud Partnership – Bloomberg http://t.co/7RB1kt65bb
— Josh Weinberger (@kitson) May 29, 2014
Largest CRM companies ($B revenue) – 2013 Gartner:
1 @salesforce – $3.3B
2 @SAP – $2.6B
3 @Oracle – $2.1B
4 @Microsoft – $1.4B
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) May 29, 2014
Pigs flying? http://t.co/xSUuc8ykl1 running on Microsoft Azure? Don’t laugh http://t.co/sXEoaZezVc
— Gigaom (@gigaom) May 29, 2014
Why companies are racing to build the soup-to-nuts cloud platform long embraced by Marc Benioff (by @pburrows & @BW) http://t.co/U9WKzpJTSQ
— Salesforce (@salesforce) May 28, 2014
| Of course. there’s been a mixed reaction to the reported partnership. These little piggies are happy:
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Greatest news of the day! Microsoft, Salesforce Said to Discuss Cloud Partnership – Bloomberg via @BloombergNews http://t.co/DMunpdVnVy
— Jonathan Baltz (@jonathanbaltz) May 29, 2014
Great to hear that the leaders think of healthy and technologically empowered ecosystem and not just about rivalry. http://t.co/VRkPbo1Osv
— Abhishek S (@abhisheksubbu) May 29, 2014
And these little piggies are not: |
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