Included in Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's extensive remarks to an audience at the recent Microsoft Business Summit in Redmond was an acknowledgement of a competitive threat posed by salesforce.com, in which Ballmer said  "we're going to give Salesforce a very effective run for their money."

Responding to those remarks, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff recently said, "Microsoft's failed enterprise software strategy has let the industry down. We have competed against them in the CRM market since 2002, and they have failed to deliver a competitive product.  They just cancelled version two of that legacy application and skipped ahead to three.  In the meantime, we are on the 18th generation of our service in just six years. Customers are tired of waiting for Microsoft to innovate."

Benioff noted that salesforce.com will be holding an event of its own, Dreamforce, in San Francsico on September 11-14, and will have major announcements during the show.

        
Steve Ballmer         Marc Benioff