Microsoft says it is offering Sage Software customers and partners a safe port in the storm in the wake of the sudden death of Sage's largest solution provider, MIS Group of Dallas.

The company is trying to woo customers and partners away from Sage with a promotional offer that promises a 25 percent rebate and a 50 percent discount on licensing for customers willing to make the switch to Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

MIS Group, which won Sage's partner of the year honors for the last two years, closed up shop on July 6 with nothing more than a post on its Web site citing the economy, tight credit and "market circumstances" beyond its control.

Microsoft Tuesday in a statement highlighted the promotion, aiming it at "customers and partners concerned with the stability of the Sage Software channel."

With the promotion, Microsoft is enabling qualified channel partners to offer the discount and a rebate of up to $25,000 to customers that switch to Dynamics from Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200.

A phone call to Sage for comment on the Microsoft offer was not returned at press time. Sage, however, has said it is working to assign MIS Group customers to other solution providers so they are not left in the lurch.

The Microsoft promotional offer has been in place since May, prior to MIS Group's demise.

"Microsoft is in an extremely strong financial position so there is absolutely no cause for any customer or partner to be concerned in that regard," said Crispin Read, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

Read lashed out at the lack of investment Sage is making in product research and development to move its legacy products to next-generation solutions. Microsoft, meanwhile, invested a whopping $8.2 billion, or nearly 14 percent, of its $60.4 billion in sales in its last fiscal year into research and development.

Even Sage North America CTO Motasim Najeeb at the vendor's channel partner conference earlier this year admitted that Sage needed to pick up the pace on the product research and development front. "Some of our products have fallen behind the technology curve and need increased R&D investment," acknowledged Najeeb, who was named CTO in January.

Read emphasized what he called Microsoft's more adaptable and agile ERP solution, compared to Sage, Oracle and SAP, that results in big savings for customers.

"Some of the old legacy ERP products have a fairly archaic design in terms of user interface," he charged. "They are difficult to use." He said Microsoft Dynamics ERP offers "a productivity gain that we feel customers can immediately realize as they switch onto a more [Microsoft] Office-like experience."

Read refused to provide any specific numbers on how many customers Microsoft partners have migrated from Sage to Microsoft Dynamics ERP. But he said he sees an "accelerating trend" of customers moving from older ERP products such as Sage and the other major players to Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

Besides recruiting Sage customers, Read said Microsoft is actively recruiting Sage partners. "We'd love to hear from Sage partners who would like to move onto a more modern solution, which we think would be a better foundation for their business," he said.