I don't know: 55b is a huge number, not unfathomable of course but huge. Salesforce is a great company and a no doubt innovative and disruptive one, but they hold no talent that Microsoft doesn't have and they will hold very few businesses that are not already Microsoft customers in some regard. You might be able to argue that they have a lot of cloud expertise, but Microsoft has already built some incredible cloud offerings in Office365, Outlook and Onedrive that share a lot of the overlap with Salesforce. I have a hard time believing that Microsoft would even want any part of that, it just seems like a huge waste of cash for a very little upside. If they had mentioned Oracle, it might be a little more feasible.
The difference between Oracle and Microsoft is that Oracle has offerings in the majority of the places that Salesforce.com plays in. Oracle has a CRM, a Marketing Cloud, Analytics, and so on.
Microsoft has a CRM, but not one with a significant market share. They also have an analytics platform, but not one that is as clearly defined - there's SQL Server, Azure Analytics, BI for 365. They have no marketing management, no real helpdesk/support system, etc.
If anything I would say that there is much less overlap between MSFT and SFDC vs. Oracle and SFDC.
Plus Ellison is an investor in Netsuite - not that it precludes a SFDC acquisition, but it's yet another hurdle.
Very true. I work for SalesForce's only major competitor. We were acquired by Oracle as social marketing is a space that they had almost no understanding of but a strong desire to enter. Since our company was already researching social analytics, sentiment analysis and direct social marketing tools, I'm sure it was easier for them to acquire us than start R&D on their own tool suites. Not to mention our already installed client base. Salesforce is a hot commodity in our space. Were MS to acquire them they would have a foot in the social space with almost no time investment and little onboarding expenses. I'm kind of surprised this deal fell through.
Salesforce is also generating $6b of revenue per year, and is still growing really fast. It's an awesome business to own even if it didn't have the other benefits of improving Microsoft's capabilities/talent.
