Salesforce, Microsoft reportedly in new partnership talks

First SAP and now, perhaps, Salesforce.com?

If a Bloomberg report is correct, Microsoft and Salesforce have been in talks that would bring the two rival CRM vendors back into a working relationship around Microsoft Azure.

Discussion points range from integrating Salesforce products with Microsoft Office, to the more vague report of a partnership that "will make Salesforce's program available on Microsoft's Azure service".

The word "available" could mean any range of things, from new purpose-built integrations with Azure services to specific compatibility agreements for the Salesforce1 platform, or perhaps something entirely different.

If there was one thing you could count on in the Dynamics CRM community over the last few years, it was that Microsoft would go to bat for you against Salesforce in virtually every way. But just like the recent efforts by the Azure team to broaden its support for SAP products or the release of Office apps for iPad, there are strategic reasons why CEO Satya Nadella's Microsoft wants to make its software and services perform in the right scenarios for the right organizations. Whether a Salesforce agreement ever sees the light of day remains to be seen.

Salesforce remains the largest CRM vendor overall, with 16% of the market, according to the latest Gartner estimates. That's compared with Microsoft's 6.8% market share.