Microsoft News Tracker

In a bit of a surprise, Microsoft today announced that it was acquiring the assets of Global Care Solutions, a small Thai health information systems developer:

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Today at its Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft revealed the offering details of its long anticipated hosted CRM solution, Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM:

Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM will be operated and managed by Microsoft within its 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 Dynamics Live CRM will use the same code base as the on-premise and partner-hosted versions of Microsoft Dynamics 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.

It also puts the partner-hosted version in the shade as we’ve mentioned previously. Some balm for that wound is that partners can earn 10% of the recurring Live CRM subscription fees when they sell it to customers. The on-premise and partner-hosted versions will be available to those that still want it in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The customer early access program for Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM will begin this quarter and will extend through the remainder of 2007. It will offer the Professional version of the service (see below) at no charge to customers during the early access period; at the end of the early access period, normal service fees will apply.

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Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM will be available as a range of service offerings, with features and pricing designed to optimize value for different types of customers. The first two service offerings will be the following:

• Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM Professional will offer full-suite CRM through Microsoft Outlook and browser clients, customizable workflow powered by Windows Workflow Foundation, and rich configuration and extensibility capabilities. The price for Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM Professional will be $44 per user per month; however, during 2008 it will be offered to customers at a promotional price of $39 per user per month.
• Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM Enterprise will offer all the capabilities of the Professional product as well as offline data synchronization. The price for Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM Enterprise will be $59 per user per month.

During the early access program, all customers of Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM will use the Professional version of the service. The Enterprise version will be made available in the first half of 2008.

Although it’s version 1.0 and will take some time to get up to speed, the target of Dynamics Live CRM is obviously Salesforce.com and the play looks to be price.

Update: Salesforce.com to Microsoft: Is that all ya got? Best line:

“We could talk for hours about all the great on-demand services that are out there that I can sign up and use. Where is Microsoft? Microsoft has a price list, not a product.”

Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO, rallied the faithful today at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference with a variety of announcements. Heading the bill, “Turner announced that Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008.”  (You may know Visual Studio 2008 as “Orcas” and SQL Server 2008 as “Katmai.”) Unsurprisingly, a lot of PR hoopla is planned for partners and in general.

Today, Microsoft and Linux distributor Xandros signed an agreement reminiscent of the controversial Microsoft-Novell deal. Microsoft and Xandros will work together on interoperability, Microsoft sales and marketing will tout Xandros as a “preferred Linux distribution,” and everybody’s favorite part:

Through the agreement, Microsoft will make available patent covenants for Xandros customers. These covenants will provide customers with confidence that the Xandros technologies they use and deploy in their environments are compliant with Microsoft’s intellectual property.

We’ll see how this plays with the Open Source crowd, particularly since the final draft of the GPL version 3 license, while grandfathering the Novell deal, would not apply here. See also Richard Stallman’s take on how GPL 3 will provide to all Linux users the same Microsoft patent protection extended to Novell.

Sometimes you just have to laugh - ‘Craplets’ could damage Vista launch: Microsoft exec:

A senior Microsoft Corp. executive says the company is concerned that uncertified third-party software loaded onto new computers by manufacturers could hurt the launch of consumer versions of its Windows Vista operating system later this month.

In a discussion Tuesday night at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Microsoft official told CBC News Online, on condition of anonymity, that the world’s largest software maker is frustrated by legal shackles that prevent the company from restricting what kinds of software major computer makers install on new PCs.

“We can’t do anything about it because it would be illegal,” the executive said in reference to restrictions placed on the company following a U.S. federal anti-trust lawsuit against the company.

The concern arises from third-party software that hardware makers commonly install on new computers in exchange for a fee, many of which have not been tested and certified by Microsoft to work with Vista, the executive said. They include things such as links to online services, and demo versions of programs.

“We call them craplets,” the official said. The term is a contraction of the words “crap” and “applet.” An applet is a small computer program or application.

Yeah, it’s an anonymous source, but I’ll take it at face value because I hate “craplets” and expect there are a lot of other folks who do too. However, I’m also intimately aware of the thin margins in the PC business and the money from installing preloads is very important. The PC ecosystem is largely a creation of Microsoft and if they don’t like what the OEMs have to do to make a living, maybe they could knock a few bucks off the Vista licensing fee. I doubt that any antitrust regulator would object to that. Besides, what happened to all that ISV outreach to ensure quality Vista applications?