Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) and salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) are close to announcing an alliance which involves delivering software via the cloud, reports New York Times Bits columnist Quentin Hardy. As of this writing, shares of Oracle were down 9 percent, still feeling the effects of Thursday’s weak earnings report. Salesforce on the other hand, was up 4 percent.
Details On The Oracle – Salesforce Partnership
Sources apparently told The NYT that the partnership between Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) and salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) will officially be announced next week. The new integration will make it easier to share their products through the cloud. The goal of the data sharing is to make the products made by both companies more attractive to buyers.
Oracle And Salesforce: Uncomfortable Bedfellows?
Hardy notes that the partnership is especially interesting because the heads of both companies have been “sometimes warring” with each other. For example, Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCLE) apparently kicked salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) CEO Marc Benioff out of a conference that he had paid $1 million to speak at. The spat was due to comments he had made that were critical of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s onstage performance.
However, the two companies’ fates have been intertwined. Benioff was once an executive at Oracle, and Ellison invested in Salesforce early on in the company’s history. Also Salesforce’s products rely on the database made by Oracle. And as cloud computing has becoming increasingly important over the last couple of years, companies like Oracle and Salesforce have found themselves having to change.
Oracle’s Other Alliances
Hardy also reports that Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) is expected to announced another major partnership on Monday. The company’s co-president Mark Hurd will appear with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer and Server and Tools chief Satya Nadella. Together the two companies are expected to announce another cloud-based partnership that will make Oracle’s products more easily available in Microsoft’s cloud.
Oracle also made an alliance with Dell Inc (NASDAQ:DELL) earlier this month, giving it access to more medium and small businesses.
