1、Patent landscape StudyAcquisitionTABLE OF CONTENTSIntroductionandCriteria.2TheLargestAcquisitionOfTechnologyIndustrySalesforceAcquisitionByIBMSalesforceAcquisitionByOracle.3.4.5.7.11PredictingTheSalesforceAcquisitionThroughPatentAnalysisComparisonOfTopTechnologiesOfSalesforceWithGoogle,Microsoft,SAP

2、AndOracle.19.20TopInventorsInSalesforce,Google,SAP,MicrosoftAndOracleConclusionSalesforceAcquisitionByMicrosoft.5InTheRunForSalesforceAcquisition.32A CROSS COMPANY PATENT ANALYSIS ONSALESFORCE ACQUISITIONThe IT industry is known for its fair share of mergers andacquisitions.From acquiring nascent st

3、art-ups with a smallrevenue stream to those with a huge potential,the technologyindustry has seen it all.Be it WhatsApps$18 Bn acquisition orNest for$3.2 Bn,the industry does only little not to surprise us.Running up to an acquisition demands ascertaining available cashflow;culture fit and market se

4、ntiments,among others.Mostimportantly,however,the strategic fit in technology should makesense.Salesforce has been in the limelight recently since it hiredfinancial advisors,possibly to discuss an acquisition.We thought itsa good idea to use the patent data to analyze the possiblecontenders and see

5、if we can predict who has maximum likelihoodto acquire/partner with Salesforce.At present,it is unclear as for which company among the topcontenders this acquisition will make a strategic fit.It is alsounclear which company among the possible bidders will actuallymove forward to acquire Salesforce,e

6、ven if an acquisition were tohappen.However,given the patent portfolio and technologicaloverlaps,for some companies it makes more sense than forothers.The top ones in line are:Oracle,IBM,SAP,Microsoft,HPEnterprise and Google.3IN THE RUN FOR SALESFORCE ACQUISITIONWhile we see that the acquisition cou

7、ld give a boost to Microsoft,for Oracle the assimilation might be far easier.Google could stillsurprise us as it has been known to acquire companies notbelonging to its palette.For IBM the acquisition will be much out ofits character.The same applies to SAP,who does not seem to have any interestin a

8、cquiring Salesforce.Nevertheless,the comparison of the patentportfolios of these companies is an interesting one and it presentsthe whole scenario of the possible acquisition of Salesforce in adifferent light for the readers.Judging from the online communitys reaction to the potentialacquisition of

9、Salesforce,the digital world is headed for a tailspin.recently reported that Salesforce,the enterprise cloudcomputing solutions company,has brought on financial advisers toconsider an acquisition offer or perhaps to fend off one.THE LARGEST ACQUISITION OF TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRYSalesforce,which currentl

10、y has a market cap of$48.1 billion,holdsa 16.1%market share of the global Customer RelationshipManagement(CRM)software market which stands at$20.4billion.Bloomberg4It$5.3 billion in revenue last year.If it were to go through,such an acquisition would be one of the largest acquisitions in thetechnolo

11、gy industry the world has ever seen,certainly dwarfing$22 billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook or the$10 billiondollar takeover of PeopleSoft by Oracle.Analysts are of the view that such a deal could be financed by only ahandful of the largest technology companies.The top contenders,as per an

12、d ,who have the finances and for whomthe acquisition seems a better strategic fit,could be Oracle,IBM,SAP,Microsoft,HP Enterprise and Google.While SAP and Oracle have made it clear that they will not beamong the potential bidders,there are no clear indications fromother giants like IBM,Microsoft or

13、Google.SALESFORCE ACQUISITION BY IBMFor IBM,an acquisition of Salesforce would be outside its typicalM&A strategy.When it comes to acquisitions,IBM has typicallyfavored to buy smaller companies.Its biggest acquisition wasCognos,Inc.,a business intelligence software company,in 2007,for$4.5 billion.Al

14、though purchasing Salesforce would give IBM an instant cloudrevenue stream,but this acquisition would be out of IBMscharacter,says .reportedBloombergCRNBloomberg5Oracle on the other hand,has fairly valid reasons to acquireSalesforce.It probably would be simpler for Oracle to incorporateSalesforce in

15、to its product line since Salesforce is actually built onOracles own database technology.Moreover,getting access to allthe SME market through Salesforce would be an added plus.Further,if this happens,according to Gartner,the combined entitywould make Oracle the largest CRM software company in thewor

16、ld.Oracle,however,is not running up for acquiring Salesforce.It wasmade clear by Safra Catz,Co-Chief Executive Officer,Oracle,in astatement,that they are backing other companies,such asMicrosoft,as it would create a lot a disruption in the cloud marketand which perhaps will be good for .However,we b

17、elieve that this is just to keep the press away andinternally this would have definitely discussed in the boardmeeting.SALESFORCE ACQUISITION BY ORACLEIt could make more sense for Microsoft,who is looking to build alarge cloud business and was seen informing analysts that theCompanys objective is to

18、 attain annual revenue of around$20billion from the cloud business by mid-2018.SALESFORCE ACQUISITION BY MICROSOFTOracle6Both Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Salesforce CEO MarcBenioff have been lately seen interacting and possibly thinkingaround more alignment between the two companies.And,in May t

19、his year,reports of Nadella offering$55bn to Beniofffor the acquisition surfaced.However,the terms could not beagreed upon as Marc Benioff insisted upon$70bn,says .Microsoft,in fact,with$95.4 billion in cash and short-terminvestments has the actual gun powder to acquire Salesforce.Itwould actually l

20、ook as a better strategic fit,given their enterprisesoftware businesses.Also,it could prove as a boost to the proprietary CRM,a competitor to Salesforce.On the other hand,it would be difficult for Salesforce to survive inthis domain without Microsoft.Microsoft has maximum number ofpatents in this ar

21、ea and it has a history of making money from itscompetitors.For example,Apple(for Mac)and Samsung(for Android)arepaying huge royalties to Microsoft for its patents.Its not going tobe easy for a comparative small company like Salesforce to fightMicrosoft.CNBCMicrosoftDynamic7In the midst of the dilem

22、ma of who will acquire Salesforce andwhether or not its even up for sale,we did a cross companypatent analysis to find if there are some technology overlaps andpotential synergies which could lead to a more strategic fitbetween Salesforce and Microsoft,Oracle,IBM or Google.We looked at the total pat

23、ent set of Salesforce and came up withthe top 10 patent classes under which it has maximum patents(and/or applications)filed.Then we looked at the patents in thoserespective classes within each of the potential bidders:Google,Microsoft,Oracle and SAP.PREDICTING THE SALESFORCE ACQUISITION THROUGHPATE

24、NT ANALYSIS8This chart shows the top technologies in the patent portfolio ofSalesforce.This set of top 10 IPC class has been used as the basefor comparison for the entire report.All these mostly deal with digital computation,informationretrieval,protocols,etc.that relate to the record keeping andinf

25、ormation manipulation offerings of Salesforce.Side note:Patent class is a system to classify patent documentaccording to their technical features.classes9The above chart shows the number of granted patents vs.thenumber of published patent applications in the 5 targetcompanies.The patents(granted and

26、 published applications)considered arefrom the top 10 technologies shown in the previous chart.As can be seen,Microsoft leads the patent activity.It is alsoobvious as Microsoft is one of the oldest in this domain.However,from the strategic perspective is someone has to give astrong competition to Mi

27、crosoft,any of the companies likeGoogle,Oracle or SAP can gain an upper hand by the acquisitionof Salesforce.Oracle and SAP do not seem to be over enthusiastic towards thisacquisition at this point of time.It can then be Microsoft to gain anindomitable position in the market or Google who will then

28、becomparable to Microsoft in the domain related to CRM.There can of course be other players,but these companies seemto make the most eligible candidates to acquire the offerings ofSalesforce.Download Also:Xiaomis global expansion planA Patent portfolio analysis uncovering Xioamis patent acquisitiona

29、nd filing campaign to build war chest for its global expansion plan.10The above chart shows the number of new patent applications in2014 filed by the target companies.Microsoft filed the maximumpatent applications within the top 10 classes while Salesforce filedthe least.These trends appear to be si

30、milar to the overall comparison of thepatent portfolios of the five companies,showing that each has itsown independent IP strategy.11COMPARISON OF TOP TECHNOLOGIES OF SALESFORCEWITH GOOGLE,MICROSOFT,SAP AND ORACLEThe chart compares the patents in the class G06F 17/30 in thetarget companies.Microsoft

31、 holds the maximum number ofpatents at 4194 while Oracle follows at 2017.G06F 17/30 is apatent class for information retrieval.12The chart compares patents in the class G06F 7/00,that is forContent Handling and Ordering,within the target companies.While Microsoft leads the group at 1625,Google and O

32、raclefollow at 640 and 824 respectively.13The chart shows patents in the class G06F17/00 that containspatents for data processing.Microsoft leads the group whileGoogle,Oracle and SAP are close to each other at 498,572 and475 respectively.14The chart compares the number of granted patents in the clas

33、sG06F 15/16 in the target companies.Being a newbie,Salesforcehas the least number of patents at 42,while Microsoft leads thegroup at 2639.G06F 15/16 classifies patents that are on dataprocessing infrastructure.15The chart depicts the patent count for the class G06F 9/44(forprogram control)in the tar

34、get companies.Microsoft nearly hasdouble the number of patents than those of Oracle in this class.16The chart depicts the patent count in the class G06F 15/173(fordata processing network)in the target companies.Microsoft leadsthe group while Google and SAP have comparable number ofpatents.The chart

35、shows the patent count in the class H04L 29/06(a classfor data processing protocol)in the target companies.Salesforcehas the least patents while Microsoft has the highest number ofpatents in this class.17The chart shows the patent count in the class H04L 29/08 withinthe target companies.The class H0

36、4L 29/08 classifies patent filedfor data transmission procedure.18The chart shows the patent count in the class G06F 11/00 foreach of the target companies.The class contains patent for errorcorrection.The charts compares the patent count in the class G06F 21/00within the target companies.Microsoft l

37、eads the group at 836followed by Oracle at 273.G06F 21/00 classifies patent relatedto data security.19TOP INVENTORS IN SALESFORCE,GOOGLE,SAP,MICROSOFT AND ORACLEThe above chart depicts the top inventors at each of the targetcompanies.For the patent classes,we have considered the top 10technologies.W

38、ei-Ying Ma from Microsoft has maximum patentswithin the top 10 technologies while Googles AlexanderMedvinsky has the second spot.20CONCLUSIONIt is certainly difficult to ascertain as to which direction thepossible acquisition would move.The cross company patentanalysis on Salesforce acquisition thou

39、gh definitely puts thetechnological perspective on the same table.Moreover,one mightbe inclined to one or the other Company based on it.However,an acquisition has more than few variables.Thoughtechnological fit will be an important one but whether or not it willmake sense practically and the market

40、reaction,financialperspectives,competitive regulations,etc.make the equationquite complex.It would be interesting to see how the possibility ofan acquisition of Salesforce pans out.THANKS FOR READINGGreyB.com55MarketStreet,Level10Singapore048941+65-84306322Findusonweb!SalesGGreyBServicesGreyBisapatentresearch&analyticsfirmwhichusesuniquecombinationsofhumanbrainsandstrongmachinelearningalgorithmtounearthhiddeninsights.