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File Photo: Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff announced a partnership last May.

Share of Salesforce.com rose as much as 4 percent in trading this afternoon after Bloomberg News reported that Microsoft is considering a possible bid for the San Francisco-based company.

Microsoft wasn’t the unnamed company that was reported last week to have approached Salesforce about a possible acquisition, according to the Bloomberg report. However, now that Salesforce is in play, the Redmond company is considering its options.

Trading of Salesforce shares were halted briefly because of volatility after the Bloomberg report today.

As we noted last week, a deal with Salesforce would make sense as an acquisition for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, allowing him to solidify Microsoft’s position in cloud computing, where he is already focusing much of the company’s attention. In some ways, it makes far more sense for Microsoft than did the Nokia smartphone acquisition, which is a leftover of Steve Ballmer’s tenure at the company.

It would also play to Microsoft’s traditional strength as an enterprise technology provider, further distancing the company from rivals such as Apple and Google.

Although such a deal would have seemed almost out of question a year ago, Microsoft and Salesforce have been working together more closely following their partnership announcement last May.

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