Channel Beat: Who's Going To Buy Salesforce?

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Thenext big acquisition could be Salesforce.com-- Bloomberg reported this week that the cloud software pioneer has been approached by a potential buyer.

Salesforce has a market capitalization of more than $47 billion, so an acquisition would be one of the largest ever in the IT sector. Wall Street analysts say it’s likely the buyer is either Oracle or Microsoft, but both companies refused to comment.

Cisco launched a new OpenStack-based private cloud bundleat this week’s Partner Summit, ramping up the company’s stake in the private cloud market.

Cisco partners can now sell the hardware and subscription service used to run Cisco’s OpenStack-based private cloud, and Cisco promises a ’public cloud-like’ experience behind the firewall.

The bundle will be available to all certified partners, and Cisco says it is 30 percent to 40 percent cheaper than Amazon’s offering. Partners expect the bundle to also rival cloud platforms from HP, EMC and VMware.

Apple is regaining market dominancewith its iPhone sales, as the company beat analyst expectations with a 27 percent increase in sales in its second quarter.

Apple shares hit an all-time high of $135.62 following the numbers. Apple also set a record in China, with 71 percent year-over-year growth in that country. CEO Tim Cook has not yet released numbers around the Apple Watch, which hit stores just one week ago.

PUBLISHED MAY 1, 2015