SAP squashes any idea of a Salesforce bid

Scott Wallask Profile: Scott Wallask

Regardless of whether the reports of Salesforce possibly seeking a bidder represent only rumors, SAP stated something as a fact:

It won’t buy Salesforce.

“We have zero interest in Salesforce.com,” said Bill McDermott, SAP’s CEO. McDermott spoke to reporters and other attendees during a Q&A at the SAP Sapphire conference today in Orlando.

Last week, Bloomberg Business reported on rumors that Salesforce had sought advice from bankers in reaction to a potential bid for the company. The issue is of interest to attendees at Sapphire because so many SAP customers also use Salesforce.

“You couldn’t throw a rock in here without hitting a Salesforce customer,” said Don Loden, principal consultant at Decision First Technologies in Atlanta.

Obvious suitors for Salesforce would include SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Salesforce is valued at around $42 billion, but has been losing market share, according to some high tech observers.

At Sapphire, SAP is pushing a “run simple” motto that boils down to SAP’s HANA system, particulary on a cloud platform, pulling data from a company’s core ERP system. McDermott envisions an automated supply chain using such data that gives customers the items or services they want within an e-commerce arrangement.  The need for salesforce automation (SFA) to make those customer contacts is dwindling, McDermott said, terming Salesforce a “redundant system” in such cases.

“The cheese moved from SFA to external customer e-commerce,” he said.

Scott Wallask is news director for the Business Applications and Health IT groups at TechTarget. Follow him on Twitter @Scott_HighTech.

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