A major ERP/CRM acquisition for Microsoft…good or bad for Dynamics CRM?

Posted by Mike Snyder on May 13, 2009 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (4)

I was speaking with Microsoft sales rep today and he mentioned a rumor that Microsoft was considering acquiring SAP. Sure enough, the Wall Street Journal reported this story today:

“The Redmond, Washington-based software giant - for the first time in its history - sold bonds to investors earlier Monday, capitalizing on its sterling credit rating and investor appetite to raise $3.75 billion.

The move sparked speculation that Microsoft could be planning to use the money for an acquisition - especially since the company already had more than $25 billion in cash and investments at the end of March - as it seeks to revive growth.

Bill Whyman, an analyst at ISI Group, had said Microsoft could use the additional cash to help fund an acquisition in the corporate software market, such as that of a company like SAP AG.”

My initial reaction to this rumor was “hmmm… that might not be good news for CRM partners like us”. However, the Microsoft rep seemed really excited about the SAP acquisition idea for the following reasons:

• SAP’s CRM is horrible and everyone knows it.
• SAP has a large global customer base using their ERP products.
• Microsoft could then run back through those SAP ERP customers and sell those companies oodles and oodles of Microsoft products such as SQL Server, Windows Server, SharePoint and of course…Microsoft Dynamics CRM!

After thinking this over a little longer, I am starting to see his point of view that an SAP acquisition just might be great news for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Of course this sounds good on paper but the process of digesting a company the size and complexity of SAP into Microsoft would be a MAJOR task. If you think there are a lot of Microsoft reorgs now, just add SAP’s 50,000 employees into the mix and let the fun begin! In case you’re curious, SAP has a market cap of $47 billion which is about 25% of Microsoft’s $177 billion. Therefore that $3.75 billion that Microsoft raised today wouldn’t even make a small dent into that $47 billion number.

Steve Ballmer shot down this rumor immediately, but stay tuned…where there is smoke, there is often fire!

Partner conference wrap up

Posted by Mike Snyder on July 16, 2007 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics,   |  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0  |  Comments (1)

Well despite my best intentions, I wasn't able to write any blog updates last week during the Partner conference. If you've never attended a Microsoft conference before, it might seem hard to believe but it is difficult to find just 30 or 40 minutes of time where you can just sit down and write.  The conference events start early in the morning and runs non-stop throughout the day. Since almost everyone from the Microsoft CRM ecosystem is in one spot for the week, I try to take to advantage of that and book as many meetings as possible to catch up with folks I might not see too often. You also need to spend some time to hit the Expo floor and just poke around for anything interesting there. And when the official conference events wrap up around dinner time, the real fun begins. There are tons of parties and social events in the evening and therefore getting to bed before 1:00am is a unusual occurrence! Well enough about my sob story, let me try and wrap up my thoughts on the event:

• Once again, Microsoft CRM was one of the major stars of the conference! Microsoft COO Kevin Turner had only one product demo in his opening keynote on Tuesday, and guess which one of the thousands of Microsoft products got the honor? Yes, Microsoft CRM. 
   
• During that same Kevin Turner keynote, Microsoft did something I NEVER thought I would see. Microsoft announced HARD dates for when they will ship products...and I'm talking about major products here. Kevin said they will ship Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and BizTalk Server 2008 all on February 27th, 2008. I almost fell out of my chair when he said that. Usually they will say stuff like "later this year" or "first half 2008", so for them to give a very specific date is really shocking. And really exciting too I might add. On a side note, I asked one of the Microsoft CRM developers what he thought of this hard date announcement and his response was "I am glad I am not on that team" so I am sure there will be lots of long nights and cases of Red Bull for those developers over the next six months.
   
• The big news of the conference was that Microsoft announced its Live CRM pricing. There is so much to talk about on this topic, I am working on a separate dedicated blog post just to cover this news in detail.
   
• In addition to the pricing announcement, Microsoft released information about the Live Customer Early Access Program. If your company is interested in getting on board with Titan before it goes live to the public, please contact us and we'll try our best to get you into the program.  You can also try to apply at http://www.crmlive.com.
   
• Beyond the CRM Live pricing announcement, the energy around Microsoft CRM Titan is incredible! Of course there were several closed door meetings on Titan, but it was great to see that there were three public sessions on Titan at the event:
• MBS003 Prepare for "Titan" - Part 1: Build Business Value and Revenue Opportunities with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the Microsoft Integrated Stack
• MBS008 Prepare for "Titan" - Part 2: Build Business Value and Revenue Opportunities with Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM and Software Plus Service
• MBS011 Prepare For "Titan" - Part 3: Compete and Win in the CRM World
   
• Denver was a near-perfect host city. The weather was flawless, except for some light rain on Monday night that caused me to miss Huey Lewis and the News (yes, Huey Lewis and the News) performing at Invesco Field. Like San Diego, most of the bars and restaurants are within walking distance of the Denver convention center so it is very convenient for attendees. In addition we were able to book a hotel right next to convention center so that made our lives easier too. The only other minor complaint about logistics was the ridiculously long security lines at the airport when I left, but we obviously can't lay blame for that on conference organizers.
   
• I was lucky enough to receive an invite to participate in the Worldwide Partner Conference Invitational golf event at Bear Dance golf course on Monday. The course had amazing mountain views, and it was a first-class event from start to finish. How did I hit 'em? Don't ask. I know that golf doesn't sound like work, but I really did make some great business connections at the event...at least that's my story with my wife. :)
   
• Microsoft setup some time for us to meet with CRM industry analysts so that they could get a partner perspective on Titan and CRM Live, and that was interesting to say the least. One publication was very insightful and asked lots of questions regarding the CRM industry and marketspace. Another group spent 15 of our 30 minutes getting coffee and unfortunately I think they might have had a little anti-Microsoft agenda. How do I know? At the end of the meeting I asked the publication if there was anything else I could help with and they said (no joke) "Not unless you have something negative to say about Microsoft". Yikes.
   
• I didn't spend too much time in the Expo, but here are some quick observations:
  • Microsoft had the Surface table there, and it did look cool. However, it was behind a rope line so they were not encouraging people to play with it. Even if they did let us play with the Surface table, it would not have mattered because the line just to see the thing was massive.
  • A company from the United Kingdom called TeamKnowledge had a somewhat interesting call scripting add-on for Microsoft CRM called TK Dialogs. Unfortunately I have no idea what it costs, and the person I spoke to at the booth wouldn't even give me a ballpark number.
  • SiteCore has one of the most unique user interfaces I've ever seen within a web browser. They totally mimicked the Windows UI with Internet Explorer, and it looks real sharp. If I ever need a web content management system, I would definitely look them up.
  • I can't get over how many Microsoft CRM add-ons/ISV's I saw at that the show. It seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry has an add-on nowadays! That's great for customers, but I must admit that it is difficult for Partners to stay up to speed on all these various add-ons.

Below are some of the pictures I took at the event, I particularly enjoyed the giant bear standing outside the convention center window.

 

Buy Microsoft CRM with almost no payments for six months

Posted by Mike Snyder on July 25, 2006 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (1)

We just received details on a great new Microsoft Financing offer called the 6/50 promotion. Customers can finance the purchase of Microsoft products (including Microsoft CRM) and related partner services...and only pay $50 per month for the first 6 months! That's almost "no payments for six months". After the initial six months, the loan balance is paid back in 36 months at competitive financing rates.

Some of our customers have purchased products and services through Microsoft Financing and they loved it. The paperwork was very minimal and the approval went through quickly. Most importantly, they were able to spread their investment out over several years.

People-Ready versus Dynamics

Posted by Mike Snyder on July 24, 2006 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (0)

I was able to spend a little time yesterday watching Tiger Woods demolish the competition in the British Open. I only watched 30 to 45 minutes, but I swear I saw about 6 or 7 television commercials for Microsoft's "People-Ready" software during that limited time. Microsoft is clearly dropping some serious money to spread the People-Ready word via TV commercials. I really like the Microsoft commercials quite a bit. Unfortunately the commercials I saw during the British Open didn't mention the Dynamics brand name AT ALL!

I really wish that these commercials could have said something like "Microsoft Dynamics is People-Ready". As you know, the Dynamics brand name is relatively young so pushing the Dynamics brand out via these mainstream TV commercials would be excellent. I understand that the People-Ready campaign is bigger than just the CRM and ERP products, but just adding that one word "Dynamics" into the tag line could have really helped all of us CRM and ERP resellers.

Microsoft Partner Conference, coming soon...

Posted by Mike Snyder on June 14, 2006 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics,   |  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0  |  Comments (0)

I just booked my flights for the upcoming Microsoft Partner conference, and I AM PUMPED! I love attending the Microsoft events and you can't go wrong with Boston. No offense to Dallas (where Convergence was held this year), but Boston is much more enticing.

One of the things I enjoy the most about the conference is learning about all of the Microsoft products other than Microsoft CRM. We live and breathe Microsoft CRM every day of the week, all year long...so these conferences provide me a chance to suck up information about the other Microsoft products and solutions we can offer to our customers.

Of course the BIG news for this conference will be Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably heard that everyone and their mother is trying to download the Beta 2 versions. How many people want Office 2007 and Vista? Well Microsoft had to throttle their downloads because they're concerned about crashing the ENTIRE Internet.

“We are experiencing extremely high download demand at this time. The wait time to start the download is very long and many customers may be unable to access the download site. To guarantee participation in the Customer Preview Program (to receive both Beta 2 and RC1) we recommend you use the DVD kit order option above,” Microsoft notes on the Vista order and download page.

According to company sources, the Redmond company has anticipated the level of demand but is ceiling on the resources available; an eventual increase in bandwidth could result in an overall collapse of the Internet or degrade its quality for the user because of the networks becoming saturated with the downloaded files.

Presently both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista Beta 2 are available for download in ISO format, the files size reaching 3.5 GB, respectively 4.4 GB. According to Microsoft, the estimated download time for the 32-bit version ranges between 4.5 hours on a Fast Cable/DSL 3.0 mbps connection and 64 hours on a Cable/DSL 256 kbps connection.

I also decided to check out the partner conference sessions list to see which ones will cover Microsoft CRM. I found just four (only 4!?!?) and of course the Brad Wilson session will be "must attend" for anyone in CRM space. Since the conference is still a month away, I assume they will add more sessions about Microsoft CRM but who knows? Again, I expect Office 2007 and Windows Vista to be the stars of this show.

MBS Leadership Transition

Posted by Mike Snyder on November 30, 2005 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (0)

Doug Burgum

This news is just over a week old, but we wanted to weigh in with our $0.02.

I'm not sure what Doug's new role really means in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions). As a partner we obviously don't interact with him on a daily basis. However, I attended multiple Microsoft events where Doug presented, gave a keynote or handled a Q&A session. I always thought he was extremely sharp, and I'd rank him as one of the best public speakers in all of information technology. I hope Microsoft continues to leverage him in these industry events, because Doug is EXCELLENT at working large crowds. The only Microsoft executive who can compete with Doug Burgum at public speaking excellence is Steve Ballmer. He's fun too!

From Microsoft:

Microsoft today (11/17/05) announced a leadership transition in which Doug Burgum, senior vice president, MBS business group, will assume the newly created role of chairman of Microsoft Business Solutions effective spring 2006.

A Letter from Doug Burgum:

Nearly five years ago, Microsoft entered the business applications category with the acquisition of Great Plains, followed by the acquisition of Navision 15 months later. As the MBS organization nears its five year anniversary, the business is set to continue on its path of accelerated momentum.

We are seeing the rewards of hard work in our YTD numbers – 16% overall growth, 18% increase in software revenue, and 21% growth in license revenue. Microsoft Dynamics, our unified brand for ERP and CRM, has a clear product roadmap. We have strong momentum with the best partner channel in the industry, increased positive field execution and our strongest, most innovative product pipeline ever.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, Microsoft Dynamics SL 6.5, and Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 have shipped and we are making solid progress towards shipping Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0. We have successfully launched Office Small Business Accounting and we’re on track for its next release in conjunction with Office 12.

Across all areas: brand, product, channel, field, operations and leadership team itself, I have never been more bullish on the future for Microsoft in business applications. Thanks to each of you for your contributions to our great start to the year.

Given the strength and momentum of our business, this is the right time to initiate a thoughtful and well planned leadership transition. So this week we will begin a formal search for a new business group leader of MBS.  The process will include a full external and internal search. We would expect the new leader to be in place by next spring.

Jeff Raikes and I are committed to finding the right person for this key leadership role.  Our primary focus will be a smooth and thoughtful change of leadership that maintains our business momentum and strengthens the confidence and trust of our partners and customers.

Throughout the search and during the full transition process, I will continue to lead and drive
the MBS business. I will also retain my full accountability for delivering on our FY 06 commitments and FY 06 financial results.

Orlando remains the MBS COO and SMS&P leader, where he will continue to bring his passion for sales, marketing and field execution. The roles of the rest of the MBS SLT are unchanged. Upon the placement of the new MBS BG leader, I will assume a new role as Chairman of Microsoft Business Solutions. 

This new role will allow me to assist in the on-boarding of the new leader and to focus on areas that I am deeply passionate about including evangelizing Microsoft “all up” solutions to business decision makers broadly and working more deeply with industry influencers, MBS prospects, customers, partners and ISVs throughout the world, including in markets where we have limited presence. 

For almost 23 years, including the last five at Microsoft, I have had the opportunity to lead this organization. I am humbled to have served so long in this role, and feel honored and privileged to have worked with such innovative team members and dedicated partners. My inspiration and energy continues to be renewed by seeing the caring, courage and commitment demonstrated each and every day in the great work delivered by you and our partners.

With the foundation for success and growth in place for us and our partners, and with the strong senior leadership team we have in place, I am confident that we will have a successful transition to the next MBS leader.   

Doug

Logo for Microsoft Dynamics

Posted by Mike Snyder on November 8, 2005 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (1)

From Microsoft:

In September, Microsoft announced a new brand, Microsoft Dynamics as both the replacement for Microsoft Business Solutions and as a means for aligning the brand with the R&D roadmap - until now code-named "Project Green." Now, we are introducing our new Microsoft Dynamics logo signature. We chose this logo because it implies growth, energy, and integration, as well as appearing strong, stable and connected. It is distinct and memorable, and it fits well with the other Microsoft commercial brands.

As I mentioned previously, I love product logos so I think the Microsoft Dynamics logo is a big improvement over the Microsoft Business Solutions logo:

Save the Date for Convergence 2006

Posted by Mike Snyder on October 20, 2005 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (2)

The annual conference for Microsoft Business Solutions customers (Microsoft CRM, Great Plains, etc.) takes place each spring. Save the dates to attend the Convergence 2006 conference in Dallas, Texas from March 25th – March 28th (with the Partner Only Briefing on March 24th).

The Convergence web site will go live in November and it will include the agenda, keynote speakers, pricing, sponsor and exhibitor opportunities, Pinnacle Award information and much more. I attended my first Convergence conference in March 2005 in San Diego and I had a great time. Among the perks:

• Microsoft Business Solutions strategy and product updates complete with breakout sessions.

• Networking. Networking. Networking. I took full advantage of the RIO networking tool and scheduled at least a dozen appointments throughout the conference. I got to connect with customers, prospects, partners and Microsoft employees all in one place...how can you beat that?

• Good keynotes (including the always random-but-not-quite-as-random-as-you-initially-expect keynote from Doug Burgum). In March, Bill Gates gave a keynote on the last day of the conference but unfortunately I had to miss it in order to catch my return flight. However, I did eventually get to see it on a webcast!

• User experience lab. Last year, the CRM product team had usuability mockups for people to test drive and give their feedback. On a sidenote, I also enjoyed the User Experience lab because they served these great smoothies and had a piano player laying down some soothing sounds.

So save the date, and make sure you attend the Convergence 2006 conference!

Microsoft CRM to be renamed under "Dynamics" brand

Posted by Mike Snyder on September 7, 2005 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (1)

From the New York Times:

Microsoft said yesterday that it planned to announce today a new strategy for selling software to medium-size business, including a revamped collection of programs that would handle specific jobs. The new software programs will be released starting this fall and through next year.

From Computing:

The firm has created the Microsoft Dynamics brand which it will use to market these currently standalone business applications.

The brand will replace Microsoft Business Solutions and, according to the Redmond giant, help it align products with its research and development roadmap, formerly referred to as Project Green.

Under the rebranding initiative Microsoft CRM becomes Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Great Plains becomes Dynamics GP, Axapta becomes Dynamics AX, Navision becomes Dynamics NAV, and Solomon becomes Dynamics SL.

Redmond said that the first wave of major releases under Microsoft Dynamics will share common client technology that focuses on a role-based user experience with integration to Microsoft Office.

Future versions of Microsoft Dynamics products will focus on common server technology, including a common process model.

Only Microsoft CRM will continue as part of the Microsoft Dynamics business management suite and will continue to be sold as a standalone offering.

My initial reaction is WOW! This is really big news. Of course, this raises a whole new set of questions such as:

• Will Microsoft brand the next release as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0?
• Will any Dynamics rebranding delay the Microsoft CRM 3.0 release date?
• How long before we see the Dynamics branding really start to take effect?
• What happens to the "Microsoft Business Solutions" Partner competency?
• Will there be some sort of Dynamics logo or icon?
• Where can we get even more information about this change?

Unfortunately, none of these questions are answered on the official Microsoft Q&A! Oh well, we'll update you as we learn more...

Sign up for Microsoft Business Solutions User Research

Posted by Mike Snyder on September 6, 2005 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics  |  Comments (0)

Microsoft is recruiting customers and users to get involved in their product development process through usability research.  By participating in Microsoft Usability studies, you can help influence the future product development of Microsoft Business Solutions products including Microsoft CRM.

Some activities you would be able to participate in include:

• Lab Studies & Focus Groups:  These studies will give you hands-on and detailed experience with Microsoft products that are currently under development.  Your input goes directly into product development.

• Site Visits:  They’ll come to you!  A Usability Engineer will visit you at your workplace to gain a better understanding of your work environment in order to help build products and/or solutions that meet your business needs. 

• Online Surveys & Online Focus Groups:  Participate in their studies from the convenience of your home or workplace. 

To register for future usability studies, simply fill out this brief questionnaire.  You will be contacted for opportunities that match your background and/or interests. All scheduled participants will receive a software gratuity after participating in a study!  Contact uccoord@microsoft.com for more information.