ShadowRAM: January 6, 2003

While Microsoft's forthcoming offering is getting some initial favorable reviews, there are a lot of Great Plains and Navision customers shaking their heads in the wake of the acquisition of those two companies by Microsoft. The cause for their concern is that Microsoft's CRM offering is based on source code developed at Microsoft prior to the buyouts. For all intents and purposes, the existing CRM offerings they nurtured and reared are orphans with no future. More than a few Great Plains and Navision channel partners wonder if they should shift allegiance to CRM vendors such as Kana, RightNow Technologies or Salesforce.com.

One longtime Microsoft solution provider, who was interested in what Microsoft was up to with its bCentral offering for SMBs, signed up for the service to keep an eye on it. At the time, he was offered "free" Commerce Manager and Traffic Builder services for a year. Imagine his surprise one year later when, after not using those services, he was informed by e-mail that he would be charged $249 per service per year to renew. To opt out, he had to call a toll-free number, leading to many inspiring hours of hold time.

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed details of the offering but swears non-active users won't be charged and that their service will automatically expire unless they proactively call to reactivate. This is definitely not the same message put forth in the mass e-mailing.

Microsoft also has a message for the government. President Bush officially signed the E-Government Act into law Dec. 17. As part of the legislation, the feds will allocate $45 million in the next year to make more government data available to citizens in a more user-friendly way than the existing FirstGov portal.

Microsoft quickly issued a statement strongly suggesting that the government should use its software to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act since the company has over the years enhanced its software for this purpose. What's next?

Finally, those of you feeling nostalgic as 2002 slips away may want to visit www.computerhistory.org. Silicon Valley history buffs got a chance to check out the new 119,000-square-foot digs for the Computer History Museum shortly after the staff moved into the old Silicon Graphics headquarters last month in Mountain View, Calif. Some of the museum's collection, fondly housed in what today is known as visible storage, will be opened to the public as part of a "beta museum" tentatively to be opened in May (when the group begins a major fund-raising drive).

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