Microsoft, Salesforce Said to Discuss Cloud Partnership
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) are close to an agreement that will enable customers of Microsoft's cloud computing service to use Salesforce's customer management programs, said people familiar with the talks, signaling a thaw between two longtime rivals.
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported thaw reverses the alignment Salesforce was shopping around seven years ago: in May 2007 it weighed an alliance with Google explicitly framed against Microsoft, when Salesforce positioned itself on the anti-Microsoft side of the cloud fight.
That a deal would now run through Microsoft's cloud instead shows how much the battlefield has moved — from fighting over who displaces whom, to whose customers can reach whose software. Bloomberg's sourcing is people familiar with the talks, so nothing is signed; the pickup across The Register, ZDNet, Gigaom and others within a day shows how closely both companies' ecosystems are being watched.
First-order effects
- If confirmed, Microsoft's cloud customers get direct access to Salesforce's customer-management programs, removing a switching barrier that has kept the two stacks apart for enterprise buyers.
Second-order effects
- Oracle and SAP lose the 'Salesforce doesn't play with Microsoft' wedge they could sell into joint accounts, while Google — Salesforce's 2007 partner-in-waiting — sees its erstwhile ally drift toward its biggest rival.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward co-opetition as the default structure of enterprise cloud: integration agreements replacing the winner-take-all posture that defined the 2007-era alliances, with each vendor monetizing the other's customer base.
The trend: Enterprise cloud is moving from exclusive rivalries toward negotiated interop between competing platforms, with CRM data as the first bridge.