except for the fact that larry ellison is also the largest single shareholder of salesforce.com's biggest rival: NetSuite. sorry charlie, i don't see it happening.

Jack: What does that have to do with this? I'd ditch Netsuite (roll it into) Salesforce in a heartbeat. Ellison will have to buy Salesforce at some point anyway... Better now than later, 50 percent premium is a sweet deal, imho.

Just curious, how many shares of CRM do you own? Cause there ain't nobody with any financial smarts that believes CRM is at these levels for any 'finanicial' reason, purely a technical story to this stocks price.

Nor is would anyone who can read a financial statement even suggest that ORCL could justify paying 15X sales and 234X 2009 PROFORMA earnings for this overhyped business model that virtually all customers HATE.

Tom:
Excellent reporting. You're right on the money.

When I was VP Strategic Accts for a top interactive SEM agency (search enigne marketing, paid search, search engine optimization), I pitched NetSuite as part of a team. Had the opportunity to learn about the cool things they planned to do and saw first-hand the vast upside potential.

NetSuite management has executed well; as you point out, though, there's no way NetSuite can catch Salesforce. In fact, a good case can be made they won't even be able to narrow the gap, with the Salesforce developer community broadening the reach and functionality of the platform.

Buying Salesforce would be a brilliant move by Ellison. Oracle could become dominant in the huge and potentially lucrative SMB market that's slowly coming online, thanks to Google.

Thanks for reporting this huge story. You made my Sunday!

why buy salesforce? for the eyeballs you say? for the installed base they have?

well if you're oracle and you buy netsuite, you get all the technology you need and you ALREADY have the installed customer base you need. so what would oracle really be buying with salesforce instead of netsuite? nothing really, other than a conflict of interest and another "extreme" personality in the executive suite.

Um, this article has no basis in fact. Lets take them one by one:

1. Benioff as CEO of Oracle? He's spent the last decade bashing Oracle's model. I can't see him running Oracle in any way.
2. Benioff losing interest in Salesforce? He's like 44 years old, running one of the most successful technology companies in the world and trying to make Salesforce the next Microsoft with its cloud/platform strategy. He would chuck all this? And do what, exactly?
3. Oracle and Salesforce have 2 completely different approaches to the software business application market....Oracle wants to sell more client server apps and database (which is like 2x the revenue for one big, upfront sale and recurring 24% maintenance a year). NO WAY they're going to give up this model anytime soon. There just simply isn't enough revenues in the Salesforce model (which, by the way, saves the end customer a ton of money) for Oracle to completely change their revenue.
Ludicrous article, i don't know about the source, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

I'd like to point out I don't own CRM or have any holdings in companies that I write about.

Have you seen the click comparison contests between Salesforce and Upswing CRM? Salesforce's core CRM is old and inefficient, already. See for yourself: http://www.upswingcrm.com/blog

Better to sell out now; the new competition to Salesforce will hurt it.

Tom, I posted an clip from your article at http://www.salesforcetimes.com.

We heard similar rumors about a potential sale to Google about 6 months ago. Why do you think this case is anything more than a rumor?

Don't forget that Oracle owns Siebel, who makes an On Demand CRM already, the #1 competitor to SFDC in the SAAS market in terms of subscribers. Ellison has said publicly that he intends to take it to SFDC with this product.

Oracle and Salesforce deal was already speculate on this blog several weeks ago:

http://j2ee-now.blogspot.com/2008/02/2008-acquisitions.html

John: I agree, Salesforce platform is showing its age and its vulnerability, better sell now.
Adam: This is different from Google, this would make sense. Also, Cisco would make sense, Google not.

this won't happen... I have a BETTER source.

Ellison has a 74.1% stake in NetSuite. Buying Salesforce would be like a replay of when Oracle bought PeopleSoft and Siebel. I agree with Tom, that it makes sense for Oracle. Oracle has always wanted dominance in the CRM market. Just like SAP is to ERP.

It's now a matter of whether Marc Benioff is willing.

They should sell if they can, there business is slowing. CRM posts the number of transactions that they run daily on http:trust.salesforce.com/trust/status. I have tracked this information since 7/20/2006. Perhaps it is just the economy but nevertheless, the number of transactions have been slowing. Usually after the holiday season, we see a continuous ramp in transaction volume, but this year we haven't made a new transaction amount high since 11/27/2007.

I have written the SEC a complaint letter and referenced you as a source of this rumor. If this is an attempt to pump and dump the shares, it is a criminal offense.

This has been expected long ago. Oracle must buy Salesforce.com or SAP or Microsoft will.

If this happens smaller crm rivals such as Entellium and Salesboom.com will benefit greatly because most SMEs do not feel that Oracle or SAP are ready for them.

why would he be selling 10000 shares a day, if he thinks he seriously can get a 50% premium from a suitor. do the math.

Dear Annonymous, let me explain the math. Marc Benioff is selling 10,000 Salesforce shares a day as part of an automated sell order that is designed to protect him from any charges of insider trading, which is illegal.

All I could do in reading this is burst out laughing. Oracle needs Salesforce.com like it needs a cubic mile of sand. If Benioff is shopping Salesforce.com its because he sees his platform is going to die. It's going to die firstly because salespeople hate what it has done to their lives, making them no more than robots, and secondly because this kind of proprietary platform has no future. All of the best bells and whistles are elsewhere, and they are free, efficient and viral.

Lewis, you make a couple of excellent points. What puzzles me is why you don't have the cojones to use a real name(?!)

And see what I got for a response when I tried to question Marc Benioff on similar topics yesterday... very flattery.. for me :-)
http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/02/salesforcecom_does_not_see_demand_for_microsoft_silverlight_video.php