Salesforce.com, Inc. might be up for sale, but Oracle yesterday played down speculation that it is the mystery suitor, as most analysts initially suspected.

The comments came directly from Oracle CEO Safra Catz, who didn’t outright deny her company was interested in buying Salesforce, but simply refused to comment. However, she was more forthcoming when asked about the possibility of IBM or Microsoft being Salesforce’s suitor, saying “If it’s acquired by somebody else, it’s probably good for us, to be honest.”

Catz noted that whatever company is big enough to buy Salesforce would certainly be able to bring a new dynamic to the game. “It would be interesting definitely to watch it play out and cause a lot of disruption in that market,” she said. “I would think that would be helpful to us in the short to medium term.”

Oracle has been named as one of five potential suitors that could realistically complete a takeover of Salesforce, which reportedly hired bankers on Wednesday to advise it on incoming offers.

Other likely candidates include Microsoft, which is sitting on $95.4 billion in cash and short-term investments, according to Business Insider. Salesforce would certainly bring a big boost to Microsoft’s cloud business, which is CEO Satya Nadella’s main area of focus, and the two companies are believed to enjoy a close relationship, with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff reportedly in attendance at Microsoft’s BUILD conference this week.

IBM is another big possibility, given that it’s also betting its future on the cloud. However, Big Blue is only believed to have $8.8 billion in cash reserves, which means it would need to pull together some financing to complete any takeover. It’s certainly capable of doing so, though.

Less plausible candidates, but still possible, are Google and the German enterprise software giant SAP SE. Google is an outsider because it’s still a relatively small player in the enterprise, though that part of its business is certainly growing fast. Salesforce’s cloud-based products are a great match for Google, which delivers all of its services over the web. More to the point, Google can easily afford the deal, with $64.4 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand.

As for SAP, it only has around $5 billion in cash on hand, which means it would also have to take on some massive debt to finance any deal. Like many other legacy software giants, most of SAP’s products are on premises, but it too is trying to transition to the cloud on the back of its HANA In-memory database. SAP’s cloud strategy has hit a few roadblocks in recent months, and so buying Salesforce would probably be the fastest way to establish itself as a major player.

Oracle would obviously benefit from a takeover too, and moreover, it probably has the cash to do it. Re/code notes the company’s market capitalization was $44 billion before the Salesforce rumors first emerged, but also points out such a move would be “out of character” for Oracle. That’s because Oracle traditionally dines on smaller companies that can enhance its own products, and as Catz admits, the company is “not known to throw around money”.

“We’re always looking for deals where one and one adds up to at least two-and-a-half for us because we bring some resources to the table that the seller couldn’t possibly have,” Catz said. “But it’s got to fit our sales force. It’s got to fit our technology. Price is definitely a factor. … We’re buying things all the time, about once a month.”

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