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Microsoft Just Showed Off Exactly What Salesforce Was Worried About (cnbc.com)
Microsoft just took a direct swipe at Salesforce with a new enterprise-ready version of LinkedIn's customer relationship management product called Sales Navigator. From a report on CNBC: "Today's announcements take Sales Navigator to the next level," Doug Camplejohn, LinkedIn sales solutions head of product, said in a blog. The new product steps up competition with arch rival Salesforce. Microsoft beat out Salesforce to acquire Linkedin for $26.2 billion -- by far the company's largest acquisition to date -- in June. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was so concerned, he accused the company of "anti-competitive behavior" and urged regulators to investigate. Flash-forward less than a year and Microsoft's new Sales Navigator Enterprise Edition incorporates many features aimed at turning LinkedIn into a must-have tool for sales teams at big companies.
Zune: failed to compete with ipod.
Microsoft Phone: failed to compete with either android or iPhone.
microsoft store: failed to compete with apple store and was rolled into best buy as a kiosk
microsoft surface: failed to compete with iPad or android.
Bing: failed to compete with either google or yahoo despite being based on code bought from yahoo.
Azure: failed to compete with aws/ec3/rackspace.
so yeah. i dont think salesforce is as terrified as they would have been say, 30 years ago when a microsoft embrace/extend/extinguish strategy basically spelled bankruptcy. This is a new redmond, and with it comes moronic decisions like buying Minecraft after it has no further growth potential, and porting random linux applications like SSH to windows.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm interested in what SalesForce was going to use LinkedIn for, if not precisely this - they are basically whining about someone else doing what they intended to do, while trying to push it as some sort of abuse of monopoly (where exactly is the monopoly here?)