At PowerObjects we watch with interest when our main business partner does anything – we watch with awe as MS pumps huge amounts of R&D into a product that we have based our whole company on – Microsoft Dynamics CRM. As you can imagine with a company of nearly 50 people all doing MSCRM, we get into many competitive battles with SaleForce.com. SFDC has done a great job of leading the way with software as a service (SaaS) – but other players including Microsoft have decided this is a space to be in and they want to be the leaders.

So what happens next…Well the first thing was that Microsoft ramped up product development – they took a couple years to really add the features into the product that is the most compelling set of tools for the end users and they built out a cloud infrastructure that is second to none with financially backed SLA's. Next they ramped up the partner community – this in my opinion is really the main advantage here – think of all the people out there selling and making a living on this product and you have sales teams that no other publisher can compete with. Now for the final act they get serious about taking market share from the leader and come out with all guns blazing.

Today they came out with a Cloud CRM for Less offer that is offering to pay SFDC customers $200 per seat to switch to MSCRM. This follows on the heels of a $34/seat pricing that compares to the $125/seat pricing of SFDC. Even if you are paying the lower cost of $65/seat on SFDC - $34 is almost 50% less and you get $200 seat on top of that.

So what happens next??? Well in January the next version of the product will release – CRM2011. This will take the features/benefits to a whole new level, but more importantly it opens up the cloud platform for partners to put custom code in CRM Online – allowing us to sell and drive this even faster. Microsoft has lined all the pieces up and I predict come this time next year they will be near the leading position for Cloud CRM!

If I get out my crystal ball I also see the price pressure driving the price of SFDC down….followed by a collapse in the Stock price (not very big stretch given a PE of 225 – what are investors smoking??), and for the final act they will more than likely get acquired by Oracle….

So right now we get to enjoy the underdog status, but I think we will need to enjoy it quickly because Microsoft is doing what I believe will bring them to the top!

If you are thinking about how to leverage the "switcher" offer please get ahold of us – the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Experts and we can help you get the most out of the offer, plus add a little of our own magic to make your CRM system be the best it can be.

Happy CRM'ing