Acquiring Salesforce would enable Microsoft to dominate this sector (approach 50% market share potentially). Salesforce has done a great job of fostering an ecosystem of apps that rely on their data platform.
Microsoft can add value to the existing SalesForce product by replacing their cloud infrastructure. While pioneering this concept in the enterprise SalesForce's infrastructure is outdated and aging. Plugging the existing customer base and app ecosystem into Azure (or Microsoft's cloud at large) could be a huge win for both companies.
Net-net this makes a ton of sense in theory, but big mergers destroy value more often than not as they are extremely challenging to execute effectively (it's basically a multi-billion dollar corporate refactoring exercise).
This says nothing about their capabilities, they are all feature rich. And conservatism in ERP and CRM business is valued by enterprise customers.
Microsoft's ultimate goal is for every new business to buy a Microsoft subscription which includes Windows, Office, Sharepoint Online, Exchange Online, and now maybe a Salesforce product.
It is a one stop shop for all of a business's technology needs. All they need in addition to it is the physical hardware and they're good to go. Right now a lot of businesses only run on Windows+Office+online services+an accountant package. Now they won't even need the accountant package.
If this rumor is true I'm guessing MSFT sees the opportunity for some serious cost synergies/reductions. At a $46B market cap that would seem to be a lot though!
About 50% of their revenue still goes to marketing expenditures. Another big dent in their earnings potential, of course, are the stock options they hand out (which is why Salesforce likes to talk about non-GAAP) - something like $500m to $600m per year now, equivalent to roughly 10% of sales.
http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-earnings-q1-2014-5
Microsoft, IMO, gets business needs at a pretty hard wired and basic level, unlike Google or Apple. Their core audience and financials is B2B - consumers are, IMO, a sideshow, and likely have been since the early '90s.
I'm not a huge MS fan, but I am pretty sure that I feel much more comfortable using MS services for my company as opposed to Google, whose customer service is legendary.
I'm not sure they get business needs any better than Google and Apple, but they are very well-tuned to how to appeal to enterprise CTOs -- which I think is often more about appealing to business conventional wisdom than needs, per se -- on top of having the advantage for those buyers of being what IBM was a few decades earlier ("Nobody ever got fired for buying...")
Captive audience (Salesforce customers).