A Gem Of A CRM Idea

The big surprise out of Microsoft's partner conference wasn't the very-much-anticipated CRM Live news. Indeed, Steve Ballmer himself called that probably the "single most inevitable announcement" in the company's history.

BARBARA DARROW Can be reached at (781) 839-1223 or via e-mail at bdarrow@cmp.com.

The big shock was the full-on market-share assault Microsoft announced Tuesday: The company will bundle the latest CRM Server—the professional server—with each and every ERP sale starting with the new ERP sales model in August. That server lists for $1,200 to $1,700.

That is nothing if not aggressive. And AMI Partners Vice President Laurie McCabe dug further and found out that this is not for net-new ERP customers only. It is, in fact, an offer that applies to all existing ERP customers who are up-to-date on their maintenance. "If you're a customer and not using CRM today—and there are a lot of those out there—this big obstacle goes away."

Microsoft claims something like 250,000 ERP customers, although no one can say how many are active. If half that number is active and half of that number goes for deal, that's still a big number, McCabe said.

For partners, who typically look askance at software on which they earn no margin, there is a big silver lining. The server will be bundled, but customers will still have to pay for named-user licenses. And now MBS partners will be able to supply those licenses on their discount schedule.

This piece of news got a rousing hand at the conference when announced by Microsoft Corporate Vice President of the Business Solutions Marketing Group Tami Reller and Microsoft Business Solutions Senior Vice President Doug Burgum. Even Microsoft insiders seemed blindsided by this turn of events. The CRM team couldn't initially answer which server, exactly, was involved.

This move clearly puts Microsoft CRM in the catbird's seat. Navision and Axapta ship with their own CRM capabilities and will continue to do so, but it doesn't take a genius to read the writing on the wall.

It was equally clear that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner is not wild about paying Oracle for the Siebel CRM licenses Microsoft is running in-house. The company, as other execs have already said, is busy surrounding its Siebel implementation with its own CRM and SharePoint, and Turner told Gold partners in his partner conference keynote that Siebel "will not be our sales tool of the future."

What's your view on Microsoft's CRM incursion? Get back to me at (781) 839-1223 or via e-mail at bdarrow@cmp.com.