Microsoft is set to steamroll CRM space
eWeek | at | by Mike
To no one's surprise, Microsoft is getting into the CRM space. Many may find it amusing that Microsoft is even thinking of offering customer relationship management software, since "customer relationship" and "Microsoft" rarely evoke positive responses when included in the same sentence. Microsoft's rapid inroads into the CRM space have been systematic and scary (at least to its potential competitors). Microsoft is moving so quickly that there may be few survivors in the coming years.
Look at the history. Microsoft's CRM play probably started with the innocuous addition of Pivot Table to Excel. The addition of Pivot Table gave users the ability to add meager business intelligence to Excel, which was commonly used for basic contacts and inventory. Then, in the mid-1990s, Microsoft struck a deal with SAP. The thinking was that Microsoft needed an enterprise entry point and that SAP needed to move into the midmarket. By the late 1990s, Microsoft was growing its own CRM system. The people doing the work had better plans and decided to spin off completely. That company became Onyx Software, a competitor to Microsoft's CRM that, unfortunately, has a product completely based on Microsoft technology.