Salesforce.com has finally buried the hatchet and teamed up with Microsoft – a company its CEO Marc Benioff once famously referred to as the “evil empire”.

Putting an end to speculation yesterday, the two ‘frenemy’ companies have announced an alliance that’ll allow Windows and Azure users to access Salesforce’s tech more easily from Microsoft’s products.

From a practical perspective, this means customers using Office 365 will be able to access, edit, share and collaborate on documents from within Salesforce’s portal. It’ll also mean other benefits like being able to use Sharepoints Online and OneDrive as storage options for Salesforce. The other main caveat is Salesforce1’s products will be made available for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 by next year, which means lovers of Microsoft’s mobile devices can use Benioff’s tech on the go.

Microsoft benefits from the deal too, as Salesforce will begin using its Azure cloud to develop and test its ExactTarget marketing tools, said Benioff.

The alliance between two companies who were previously sworn enemies is puzzling, not least because the pair compete directly with one another. Microsoft has its own “Dynamics” customer relationship management software that does many of the same things as Salesforce1, although its nowhere near as big.

However, Benioff brushed any concerns aside, saying: “We both want to grow our revenues so we’ll be investing in our core,” during a conference call. The implication being that Microsoft’s core businesses remain Windows and Office, while Salesforce focuses on Marketing and CRM. But that might upset a few people at Redmond, given Microsoft’s recent push into software-as-a-service and cloud products.

Benioff also gave the impression that Salesforce and Microsoft have put their earlier disagreements behind them. This includes Benioff’s earlier “evil empire” remark, and also Microsoft’s concerted “Dont Get Forced” ad campaign that targeted Salesforce in the last decade.

As recently as last January, Benioff dished out more criticism towards Microsoft, saying in an interview with VentureBeat that “They’re a follower, not a leader. They continue just to follow.”

But yesterday Benioff was in a much more conciliatory mood. “I really believe that relationships are eternal and it’s the technology itself which is temporal,” he mused when asked about these earlier rifts.

“Today, we’re announcing a very important interchange between our technologies. First and foremost, when we acquired ExactTarget we acquired a stronger relationship with Microsoft, and when Satya became the CEO of Microsoft that gave us the opportunity to have an even stronger relationship with Microsoft, and that changed, and today we’re making another change.”

Whether they’ve really put their hatred aside is besides the point. What with a new CEO now in charge of Microsoft, and a dramatically changing market, the two companies clearly see an advantage in becoming partners. One reason could be the recent spate of acquisitions by Oracle in the marketing and CRM fields, which remain at the core of Salesforce’s own business.

photo credit: Tegnerne ApS via photopin cc