Microsoft News Tracker

Henry Blodget provides a succinct summary of today’s Yahoo quarterly earnings release:

Yahoo has done what it needed to do: report a solid quarter in the high end of the range. The results were not a blow-out and certainly could have been higher. However, they should be enough to allow Yahoo to maintain its current Microsoft stance: no deal unless you raise price. Yahoo has not decided whether to pursue Google outsourcing deal, but clearly still on table.

To make it even more succinct: Nothing’s changed.

Today, Microsoft threw open the doors on its long awaited “Salesforce.com killer” hosted CRM offering, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online:

Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, an on-demand customer relationship management service hosted and managed by Microsoft. The new Internet service delivers a full suite of marketing, sales and service capabilities through a Web browser or directly into Microsoft Office and Outlook.
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is initially packaged in two service offerings:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional delivers a full suite of CRM capabilities with extensive configurability and extensibility options. Businesses get 5 GB of data storage, 100 configurable workflows and 100 custom entities. The Professional edition is priced at $44 per user per month, with an introductory offer of $39 per user, per month.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus delivers all the capabilities of the Professional version plus offline data synchronization with expanded data storage, workflow and customization options that give businesses 20 GB of data storage, 200 configurable workflows and 200 custom entities. The Professional Plus edition is priced at $59 per user per month.

More than 500 customers and 200 partners have used Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online over the past six months via the Microsoft Early Access Program.

Until recently this product was “Dynamics Live CRM”, but it’s still basically what was announced last July with some name changes. Head to head comparison of features and reliability remain to be determined, but Microsoft is undercutting Salesforce on price.