Oracle will probably come out ahead if one of its rivals buys Salesforce.com, because it would turn Oracle’s superior focus into an even greater advantage, Co-CEO Safra Catz said Thursday.

“If it’s acquired by somebody else, it’s probably good for us, to be honest,” Catz told reporters at a media event at Oracle. “Because everybody brings their own stuff to these things.”

Catz declined to comment on whether Oracle made the overture to Salesforce that was reported on Wednesday by Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources. But the company spent much of the day driving home the point that it has everything it needs to win in the cloud market.

Along with Oracle, potential buyers for Salesforce include SAP, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. Any of those pairings could create complications, as any buyout of a company worth more than US$40 billion can, analysts said. For example, buttoned-down IBM and casual Salesforce could face a culture clash, and HP is already in the middle of its own reorganization into two large companies.

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