SalesForce Acquisition Rumors Begin to Pick Up Steam
One of the biggest rumors swirling around the cloud industry involves SalesForce hiring bankers to negotiate an acquisition. Sources such as the Seattle Times, ZDNet and others have reported on a possible buyout coming SalesForce’s way.
Let’s take a look at what we know about SalesForce and its possible suitors; This may give us hints as to which company may have its sights set on SalesForce. Business cloud analysts have estimated that SalesForce may be worth up to $50B.
Oracle
If you can’t beat’em, buy’em! SalesForce has been doing cloud since 2005. In the meanwhile Oracle has certainly ramped up its cloud efforts over the past few years, touting significant successes. In the past, Oracle has mentioned that their main competition within many cloud sales verticals is SalesForce. It sounds feasible that Oracle would pony up the cash to overtake SalesForce.
IBM
IBM is always looking for reasons to get their investors excited. After IBM’s last quarterly earnings call, its apparent that IBM wants to go all in with the cloud. What better way to do that than to buy one of the original innovators of the cloud? IBM certainly has the cash and credit to pull off a $50B acquisition. Could a SalesForce buyout be in the cards for IBM?
Apple
Making a case for Apple is easy. Apple has plenty of cash on hand to pull off a mega deal and Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed interest in getting more involved with enterprise computing. SalesForce and Apple coming together to tackle the enterprise has more positives than negatives, which is why Apple buying SalesForce is a distinct possibility.
Other contenders for SalesForce’s acquisition are cloud’s big 3: Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Although it has not been confirmed that SalesForce is going the acquisition route, CloudWedge will continue to report on any breaking developments regarding the possible acquisition of SalesForce.
