Fast Facts:

• 85,000 Dynamics CRM seats were sold during Microsoft's Q4


• There's a total of 11,000 customers and 475,000 people on Dynamics CRM overall (Compare - Salesforce.com seven years to build a customer base of 32,000 organizations for ondemand crm.)


• Brand- and channel power of Microsoft and Dynamics


• Low price and flexible terms for early adopters


• Dynamics and Office integration


• Microsoft stack provides freedom with limitations


• Predatory pressure from Microsoft & remuneration disincentives


• Contracts suit supplier rather than customers


• Take CRM on-demand from Microsoft, and Microsoft will provide integration to a pretty good set of back office ERP systems - Dynamics AX, GP, and NAV, to be precise. That deep integration is what will truly make long-term, stable customers for Microsoft, and Salesforce.com's inability to offer a similar back-office suite makes its offering look even weaker.


• Microsoft Dynamics Live


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  • In July MS unveiled its own hosted service at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver.
  
  
  • A low-end Dynamics CRM Live offering will be available at no charge through the end of this year.
  
  
  • Microsoft has undercut Salesforce.com with what amounts to a recommended retail price ($59 and $44 per user per year) that gives partners the freedom to add their own price to build all-important margin. According to Microsoft, partners testing the service are charging between $80 to $150 per user. Suddenly you're losing the RRP price advantage against Salesforce.com.
  
  
  • Price alone won't convince businesses customers to switch, it'll take service maturity - and here's where Microsoft still has unanswered questions. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have not been addressed and there are no decisions yet on how to rollout service updates
  
  
  • Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff noted that Microsoft has yet to "deliver the product" and added that "the reality is, coming up with one that has an inferior price speaks more to the inferior quality of the technology than to its competitiveness as a product."
  
  

2008 promises to be the real year of on-demand CRM: It's Salesforce.com's market to lose, and, unless something changes dramatically in their favor, lose it they will. - Joshua Greenbaum

Source: ,2,3

Prashanth Rai