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Back in October, 2007 Microsoft established a new branding policy for its online offerings and in keeping with that has announced that henceforth its hosted CRM Live application would henceforth be named CRM Online. No changes in the expected 2Q2008 general availability – just a name change from Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
The distinction is that hosted versions of Microsoft’s ordinary server software applications are now supposed to get the “Online” moniker while real Web applications for individuals and small businesses get the “Live” appellation. In the first rush of Microsoft’s “Live” enthusiasm, the hosted version of CRM ended up being named “CRM Live” and this was merely a realignment.
Hitting another end of year milestone Microsoft today announced the RTM of two flavors of Microsoft Dynamics CRM:
The new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, formerly code-named “Titan,” has been completed and released to manufacturing, Microsoft Corp. announced today. The new version is offered under two product names: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for on-premise and partner-hosted deployments and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live for Microsoft-hosted deployment. Designed with a single unified-code base for both on-premise and on-demand deployments, Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables customers to choose the right deployment model for their specific business and IT needs, with the flexibility to change deployment models over time if their needs or preferences change.
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 will be available worldwide in more than 25 languages. The English language pack will be available within the next seven days to new and existing partners and customers. Nine additional language packs will be available in January and the remaining language packs will be delivered at a rate of four or more each month.
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The new Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM service is offered only in the United States and Canada, and is currently available to a limited number of customers via the Early Access program.
Despite the RTM, the hosted CRM Live offering seems to be in the same twilight state it was in July, but that will be cold comfort for the Microsoft partners who bought into hosting Dynamics CRM 3.0 for customers, only to have Microsoft blow them out of the water with their own hosting service.
Microsoft released version 5.0 of their Dynamics NAV enterprise resource planning (ERP) offering in March of this year and had promised an improved version 5.1 in 1H2008 (delayed from 4Q2007), but that plan has gone off the rails too. Now the story is that Dynamics NAV 5.1 will be folded into version 6.0 and scheduled for 2H2008 according to Darren Laybourn at the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Team Blog.
Microsoft has a fundamental problem competing with the online office application offerings like Google Docs in that they want to avoid cannibalizing their considerable Microsoft Office revenues. Therefore they have to try to emulate the desirable features of the online offerings while still requiring that the users have a fully paid up copy of Microsoft Office. That’s just what they did today when they announced “Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a new Web-based feature of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others.”
