 |
Last week Microsoft held their Convergence 2007 soiree for their Microsoft Business Systems customers and announced a package linking Dynamics ERP to Office and the upcoming availability of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 and Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0.
They also trotted out CEO Steve Ballmer to demonstrate the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM service targeted at Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce.com. You may recall that it has a rather checkered history involving Microsoft competing with partners for the hosting business.
I wish I could get more excited about the MBS family of products which were all solid if unexciting businesses until Microsoft took them over, at which point they settled into mostly profit-free lassitude despite promises of a grand convergence via Project Green. Now, we can’t even tell how they’re doing since they have been folded into the Windows Business Division (i.e. Office), but it is hard to believe that it is much better.
While Steve Ballmer may be excited about competing with long time partner SAP and the others (see also Barbara Darrow’s report), a relevant question is why they don’t just spin MBS off when it would likely be better for both parties.
“Summertime and the living is easy.” There’s just a small list of odds and ends this week.
Google reopens Writely, the online word processor it bought in March. Online services related: Wall Street loved Salesforce.com’s earnings report.
Yankee Group Predicts PS 3 Will Win The Battle For Most Console Sales, but Microsoft is making hay while the sun shines.
Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch reminds us that support for Microsoft’s Software Update Services (SUS) is coming to an end in December, so it is time to migrate to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). If you aren’t familiar with either, they are Microsoft offerings for enterprise patch management.
The Zune fans are getting restless – Is The Microsoft Zune Just A Re-Skinned Toshiba Gigabeat?
Florida schools get $80 million from Microsoft antitrust case
When Microsoft announced its self-hosted version of Dynamics CRM earlier this week, I wondered if some of the hosting partners they had enticed with the general availability of a hosted version in March might feel a little grumpy. That seems to be the case, but the problem is larger than just stubbed toes as Phil Wainewright blogs at ZDNet in Microsoft CRM Live is a dud:
One of Microsoft’s hosting partners just blew a fuse on hearing Microsoft pre-announce its CRM Live service, if a lengthy and impassioned comment on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog is to be believed.Apparently posted by Robert E Spivack, VP of sales and marketing at SPIV Technologies Group, the comment responds to a glowing write-up of the Live CRM announcement by David Thatcher, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
From that comment:
Announcing vaporware for delivery almost a year away serves what purpose?As a Microsoft hosting partner, we constantly are told that “Microsoft cares about you and really does want to help hosters” yet what do you do?
Pre-announce a Microsoft-branded hosted CRM solution that isn’t real, while we still struggle to provide CRM hosting using the kludgy “hosted CRM” update that you guys threw together half-baked?
We are still struggling just to bring up CRM in a test environment, and from reading the Microsoft Dynamics community website posts, MANY people are having trouble getting it installed.
Wainewright has some more observations on how uncomfortably Dynamics CRM has been jammed into the “Live” model and also on the vaporware aspect here:
This is a fud announcement of a plan to introduce a product this time next year (“in the second quarter of 2007″) in the hope that it’ll persuade customers to postpone buying decisions. The ploy was often used by the likes of IBM, Oracle and others back in the 1990s to spread ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’ (hence, FUD) among competitors. It worked when software applications used to take several years to develop and several more to deploy. What difference would a mere nine months make to anyone’s implementation timescales? But in the on-demand world, the strategy is as redundant as Microsoft’s far-from-Live CRM service.
Since per the announcement press release, “Microsoft CRM Live will use the same code base as the on-premise and partner-hosted versions of Microsoft CRM” you do have to wonder why it will take Microsoft so long to trot out its hosted service. Wainewright’s answer is that because the “same code base” has doomed it from the start, vaporware is all that is left.
Mike Ricciuti has the buzz at CNET:
Microsoft plans to launch a new hosted CRM service under its expanding Live brand next year.Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, a hosted alternative to its on-premise CRM software, is set to debut by mid-2007 as part of a revamped product code-named Titan.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, is expected to make the announcement here Tuesday at a conference of roughly 8,000 of its business partners.
The service, the third major category under the Live brand, joining Windows Live and Office Live, underscores Microsoft’s ambitions in the business software market. Company executives have said it could represent Microsoft’s next billion-dollar business.
Actually, I make it the fourth after Xbox Live, but who’s counting? There also already some major players like Salesforce.com, SAP, and Oracle/Siebel in the hosted CRM space as the article notes, so this isn’t going to be a pushover, but it’s yet another indication of the seriousness of Microsoft’s “Live” initiative.
Update: The announcement has taken place and the above article is now slightly different at the original source. Here’s the press release:
Building on the market success of Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0, Microsoft Corp. today announced the roadmap for the next major release of its Microsoft Dynamics CRM products, including a new software-as-a-service offering called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live. The Microsoft® CRM Live service will be operated and managed by Microsoft within its Windows Live™ datacenters, and will offer Microsoft’s partners another fast and flexible way to address the unique customer relationship management (CRM) needs of each customer. Microsoft CRM Live will use the same code base as the on-premise and partner-hosted versions of Microsoft CRM, a strategy that reinforces Microsoft’s leadership in allowing customers to choose the best deployment option for their business and IT needs at any time. The full range of Microsoft CRM products is part of Microsoft’s vision for business — the People-Ready Business — and the new Microsoft CRM Live service will be integrated with Microsoft’s Windows Live services and Office Live services.
Microsoft confirmed that Microsoft Dynamics CRM continues to enjoy extremely rapid growth across all segments, geographic regions and industries, and has added more than 50,000 new users in the most recent quarter. The current version of Microsoft CRM is completing its international language rollout, including a May launch in China and a launch this quarter in Japan. At its Worldwide Partner Conference 2006 in Boston today, Microsoft also demonstrated a new open-source client for mobile devices that will be available in August and reconfirmed its plans to release a new Microsoft BizTalk® Server-based integration this quarter that will connect Microsoft CRM to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and CRM applications from other vendors such as Siebel Systems Inc., SAP AG and Oracle Corp.
…
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live is planned for introduction in North America in the second quarter of 2007, and will be offered as a range of service offerings on a monthly subscription basis. There is no limit to the number of users that the system can support, but it will initially be targeted primarily at small businesses, a segment that has traditionally been underserved by the lack of flexible and cost-effective CRM solutions. Early access programs that allow partners to have access to the new Microsoft CRM Live service will begin in the second half of 2006.
There’s lots of interesting grist for the mill there, but it’s still unclear if this is really a new “Live” category or just a one-off. Also, back in March Microsoft announced a hosted version of Dynamics CRM 3.0 to be “deployed by hosting partners around the world”. Now any hosting partners who took them up on it are in competition with this new offering.
