Marc Benioff reveals how Salesforce’s relationship with Microsoft was ruined overnight without him even wanting it

Nov 15, 2016 06:11 GMT  ·  By
Microsoft is going for a more gentlemanish approach under the guidance of Satya Nadella
   Microsoft is going for a more gentlemanish approach under the guidance of Satya Nadella

They say the new Microsoft has become a completely new company under the guidance of CEO Satya Nadella, as it’s a friendlier partner and rival that no longer seems to be interested in dirty tricks to increase its customer base (as it was the case of the Scroogled campaign launched by Steve Ballmer).

But according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the new Microsoft is nothing different from the old Microsoft, as the company still turns to some questionable strategies when it comes to its rivals.

Benioff revealed one such episode at the Code Conference on Monday, explaining that he was invited by Microsoft chairman John Thompson to a meeting with Microsoft's cloud boss Scott Guthrie to discuss the possibility of becoming an Azure customer.

“The message was 'Why don’t you meet with Scott Guthrie? He runs Azure and would really like to walk you through the details of your business because maybe we could get Salesforce to run on Azure'... and I'm like OK, and it was clear also that he was someone not in our business, he was running Azure,” he said (emphasis is ours).

Salesforce eventually signed deal with Amazon

A few weeks after that, however, Benioff learned from the press that Guthrie was promoted as leader of the CRM business, thus becoming a direct competitor to Salesforce.

“I just came to the conclusion at that point that the new Microsoft is actually the old Microsoft. ... And little things like this started stacking up and we put it all together, I don’t feel like this is exactly the new Microsoft that we were looking for,” Benioff continued.

Salesforce eventually became the customer of Amazon Web Services, which is a direct competitor to Microsoft Azure, and the company is now continuing the fight against Microsoft by trying to block its acquisition of LinkedIn, on grounds that Redmond could limit access to data handled by social media services.

Salesforce has already contacted European regulators in order to block the deal, but a decision in this case is yet to be made.