Salesforce News: CEO Sees Oracle’s NetSuite Deal As Only Drop In Pond?

Oracle's $9.3-billion acquisition of NetSuite last month may be seen as a way to bolster its foray into cloud, but Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was hardly impressed by the news.

He told Business Insider that Oracle is late to the ballgame, with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and their own company already developing new innovations in cloud. In fact, Salesforce's revenue from cloud was already $6.7 billion in 2016, compared to Oracle's $2.9 billion for the same period.

"Oracle's scrambling to get growth in the cloud, but it obviously has not met its goals," he said.

Although the Salesforce CEO scoffing at the news of the purchase can be attributed to his intense rivalry with Oracle's Larry Ellison, analyst John Rizzuto seems to share his views.

Oracle's NetSuite deal may help the company's bottomline, but it will hardly create a ripple in the cloud industry in terms of innovation and technology.

"We would not expect the combination of these companies to create any meaningful technology/product synergies," he said.

But Salesforce has been busy as well after it acquired Quip for $750 million last week to further challenge bigger firms like Microsoft, IBM and Oracle in the customer relationship management industry and cloud services. According to this news analysis, the other companies will need to also collaborate with other startups for document management technology.

In June, Salesforce also acquired Demandware Inc., a specialist in enterprise cloud commerce in a $2.8 billion deal.

In announcing the news, the Salesforce CEO said, "Salesforce will be well positioned to deliver the future of commerce as part of our Customer Success Platform and create yet another billion dollar cloud."