"I'm really pumped up," said an energized Ballmer, predicting a "real snowball of an effect coming on" in relationship to Microsoft's entire Dynamics business which is gradually moving up into the enterprise applications space occupied by Oracle and SAP.

CRM Live is one of three deployment options in the vendor's upcoming Titan release of its CRM software. Titan will be the first Microsoft CRM release based on a multi-tenant architecture, using a single code base to support three types of usage -- CRM Live, an on-premise version of the CRM application and a partner-hosted release. All three deployment options share a common code base.

CRM Live will be another member of the vendor's growing Live software-as-a-service (SaaS) product family, joining Windows Live and Office Live. "Live is our platform in the clouds," Ballmer said, adding that more of Dynamics will be featured in the future along with live search, Mail, Xbox Live, and Mobile. "We're pushing the transformation to SaaS as fast as anyone around," he said.

Pricing for the service and details on when CRM Live will be offered outside North America won't appear until around the time of launch of the service, Wilson said.

CRM is "the most enterprise-focused" offering in the Dynamics range so far, with some user installations ranging between 3,000 and 10,000 seats, Wilson said. Ballmer said the sweet spot for Dynamics ERP and CRM will be "small enterprises and down."

Ballmer reiterated Microsoft's commitment to maintaining its four Dynamics ERP families -- NAV, AX, GP, and SL. "We take a long-term approach to all we do," he said. "We're just going to keep investing, investing, investing and investing."

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Prashanth Rai