Microsoft mulling bid for Salesforce: sources

Seattle

AS Microsoft Corp mulls over whether to launch a bid for Salesforce.com Inc, it will have to weigh the benefits of a big expansion in cloud computing against the drawbacks of a high price and a costly, time-consuming integration.

Microsoft is pondering a move after Salesforce was approached by another company as recently as April, said people with knowledge of the matter. Salesforce, with a market value of almost US$50 billion, is working with two bankers to determine a response, two of the people said. Microsoft isn't in talks with Salesforce and no agreement is imminent, the people said.

The deal would give Microsoft an additional US$6 billion in annual cloud revenue, make it the biggest provider of Web- delivered software and hand it the lead in customer-relationship manage…