Many say that the new Microsoft is a completely new company under CEO Satya Nadella, as he appears to be friendlier and more cooperative with rival companies and platforms that the company did not previously work with. They also report that the company no longer seems to care about the dirty tricks it used to use to grow its customer base (such as the case of Scroogled, a campaign started by Steve Ballmer).
But according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the new Microsoft is no different from the old Microsoft, as the company still uses some questionable strategies on its rivals.
Benioff revealed one such episode that took place during the Code Conference on Monday, explaining that he had been invited by Microsoft President John Thompson to a meeting with Microsoft Cloud Chief Scott Guthrie to discuss the possibility of becoming an Azure customer.
“The message was, ‘Why haven’t you met with Scott Guthrie? He uses Azure and could guide your business, and maybe we could get Salesforce running on Azure’… and I thought OK, it was clear that someone who wasn’t in our business was running Azure,” (emphasis added).
But a few weeks after that, Benioff learned from the press that Guthrie had been promoted to head of the CRM business, making him a direct competitor to Salesforce.
“I came to the conclusion that the new Microsoft is actually the old Microsoft. … And these little things, like what I mentioned, if you put them all together, I don’t feel like the new Microsoft is what we were looking for,” Benioff said.
Salesforce has finally become a customer of Amazon Web Services, which is a direct competitor to Microsoft Azure, and continues the fight against Microsoft, trying to block the acquisition of LinkedIn, on the grounds that Redmond could restrict access to data handled by the social service.
Salesforce has already contacted European regulators to block the deal, but there is still a lot to be done.
Let us recall that a few days ago, the CEO of Kaspersky filed a lawsuit against the way Microsoft operates, trying to eliminate every competitor.
