Salesforce Acquisition: ‘End Of Beginning’ For Cloud
May 1, 2015
Grazed Forbes. Author: Jason Bloomberg.
In the days since a Bloomberg article let slip that Salesforce.com CRM +0.47% might be on the block, there has been no end of punditry regarding potential suitors. Oracle is the most likely – except it’s not. Salesforce’s Benioff had lunch with Microsoft’s Nadella – only perhaps it was dinner. IBM IBM +0.88%, Amazon.com, or perhaps even SAP are in the mix. Only it’s not SAP. Apple anyone?
The more interesting question, however, isn’t who, it’s why. Oracle ORCL +0.96% and Microsoft MSFT +0.06% are looking to beef up cloud computing operations, according to a Reuters article. It certainly couldn’t be because Salesforce has a booming business, as it lost $263 million in 2014, with no turnaround in sight…
The Wall Street Journal is skeptical as well. A recent article focuses more on reasons not to acquire Salesforce than to actually make the deal. This article admits “there is little doubt that the cloud business is hot,” but still considers such a deal would be a “megasized software merger.”…
Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/05/01/salesforce-acquisition-end-of-beginning-for-cloud/