Salesforce builds bridges with Oracle

Salesforce was invited to speak at Oracle OpenWorld for the first time

Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff spoke at the Oracle OpenWorld event in San Francisco for the first time on Tuesday, and made surprisingly friendly remarks about his firm's traditional rival.

The remarks built on the surprise that Salesforce was allowed to market its products at Oracle's biggest customer and partner event of the year.

"We want to thank Oracle for allowing us to be here. We have a good relationship with [Oracle chief executive] Larry [Ellison]. He was our first board member and investor," began Benioff.

"We realise that a lot of customers are using both Salesforce and Oracle, and we want to know how we can bring these two companies together."

Benioff's comments are possibly the first time that the companies have been portrayed as 'close friends'.

Ellison has made many remarks in the past that have belittled Salesforce's offerings. Only last week at Oracle's annual meeting Ellison described Salesforce technology as "itty-bitty".

He also implied that most of the Salesforce technology belongs to Oracle, since Salesforce runs its computers on the Oracle database and uses Oracle middleware to run its applications.

Benioff, meanwhile, has repeatedly described on-premise software as inefficient and out of date.

Benioff was joined on the OpenWorld stage by Dell chief executive Michael Dell, following an announcement this week that both companies will partner in the online customer relationship management (CRM) space.

Dell will now offer Salesforce's CRM package and automation applications to its small to medium sized business customers.