Microsoft Closing In On CRM Market

October 3rd, 2006: In July Microsoft announced that there were big changes in store for its Dynamics CRM package, it is now rolling out pilot projects to test the waters before the full product release next year.

Korea’s The Electronic Times is reporting that Microsoft is making moves on the domestic customer relationship management market (CRM), and that it is warning that there are huge changes to come.

The software giant is reportedly going to be pitching its ‘Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live' software to small to medium businesses. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 has been available for two years, but has to date lagged behind solutions such as Salesforce.com. This new and improved CRM package, however, is far closer to being a fully-fledged software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, putting it in direct competition with Salesforce.com.

The paper says that MS Korea is conducting a pilot project with 10 cooperative companies in the country in preparation for the service’s launch next year.

While there has been an influx of companies such as Oracle offering large enterprises CRM solutions, they have failed to outdo local offerings.

This could all change with Microsoft entering the market, the team behind Dynamics CRM is certainly positive about its upcoming release.

“The coolest work we’re doing is that we’re building a single code base that will support on-premises deployments, partner hosted deployments, and the Microsoft Live service. Wrote David Thacher, General Manager Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the CRM Team’s blog in July this year. “Our goal is to give customers ‘the power of choice’, allowing them to choose how they want to use the software and change that over time.

“I’m sure we’ll see some customers initially choosing ‘quick and easy’ with CRM Live and later moving to an on-premises deployment with deep customization and systems integration,” added Thacher. “With the same software everywhere, customers and their partners can tailor a deployment and then move it easily using redeployment tools we provide.”

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