Gates Sounds Off On Software As A Service
"Software as a service is a very important trend and something we believe in a lot,” Gates told a few thousand Microsoft Business Solutions customers and partners at the Dallas event. “Software as a service is a change of relationship between us and our customers."
In fact, that’s what many solution providers and vendors worry about. They see SaaS as a trend that could upset the balance of power in account control.
Gates reiterated that the world will need on-premise and hosted software, and Microsoft aims to play a big role in both camps. "Our software will be available on both a server and service basis," he said.
There will be instances where on-premise software will be preferred and others where hosted software or managed services will take precedence, according to Microsoft, which some industry observers say is hedging its bets with such statements.
Gates said Microsoft can do many things in terms of desktop state management backup and administration that will make on-premise software easier to manage and use. He cited the company's Systems Definition Model as an example of easing the management of a pool of servers.
Though Salesforce.com, Webex, NetSuite and other pure-play SaaS players get most of the attention, Microsoft likes to point out that it has its own SaaS knowledge base. Gates cited Watson, the software feedback tool in Windows. And on Sunday, Microsoft Business Solutions Senior Vice President Doug Burgum pointed out that Microsoft fields a little hosted offering called Hotmail, which has roughly 8 million users.
Microsoft's upcoming multi-tenant CRM, code-named Titan, was a big topic behind the scenes at Convergence. And Microsoft sketched--in what some might call an interim release--a new Service Provider Edition of the current Dynamics CRM 3.0 product.
"It provides automatic provisioning and remote management where you may have a wall of servers and need to image load," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM.
Many customers want to host but don't really need true multitenancy, Wilson said. Multitenancy allows multiple customers' CRM instances to run on a shared server. He added that companies in some fields, such as pharmaceuticals, won’t allow their data to run on shared servers.
CRM Professional Edition for Service Providers is available now, Wilson said. The company also is working on new connectors to tie CRM into Microsoft's ERP applications. Integration with Siebel CRM will be facilitated via BizTalk Server.
Several partners at the show said their CRM sales have increased since Microsoft shipped Dynamics CRM 3.0 last year. Some said they tried offering Microsoft CRM with the first release and pulled back. One solution provider said he was glad he waited until 3.0 to even get involved with the offering at all.
Howard Diamond, CEO of Seattle-based ePartners, said CRM is his company's fastest-growing business, although Great Plains remains ePartners’ largest business.