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Microsoft outlines plans at Worldwide Partner Conference
VNUNet.com - Jul 21, 2006
“But there will always be end-usersthat see SaaS as an unnecessary cost and will consequently opt out. ”Microsoft also used the event as an opportunity to talk about its intentionto grow its foothold in the CRM market, and to bring partners up to speed on thetechnology and its benefits to end-users. Jason Nash, UK product solutions marketing manager for Microsoft CRM, toldCRN that to benefit from what will be an increasingly heavy period of investmentin the technology from Microsoft moving forward, its partners would have tobegin thinking holistically about CRM and stop seeing it as a silver bullet. “Our partners might not have thought about bringing services together beforeand this represents a big opportunity for them,” he said. “The challenge [in theCRM market] this year is to get our partners to think about CRM from abusiness-process point of view, rather than as a straight sale. ”Boston’s weather during the three days of Microsoft’s WPC changedintermittently from hot and sunny to hot and raining, but overall the messagefrom the WPC was one of clement weather ahead for the channel. Richard Best, business manager for software asset management services at VAR.
http://www.vnunet.com/crn/analysis/2160831/microsoft-sets-sail-towards
Analysts to Microsoft: Clarify spending
InfoWorld - Jul 25, 2006
Of that investment, $500 million will go into expanding the online business, including the adCenter paid-search platform and Live online services, such as Office Live, CRM Live, Windows Live Search and other Web-based offerings. Microsoft also said it would spend $450 million on marketing and launch costs related to its two major product launches in 2007, Windows Vista OS and Office 2007; $450 million for sales force and general marketing growth; $1 billion for the development of high-growth products and services, such as business intelligence, unified communications and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV); and another $300 million in general cost increases and other unspecified spending. What's not clear is how this spending, which initially was frowned upon by Wall Street because of its amount, will bring more revenue to the company, and more return to investors. Analysts are hoping for clarity on that at Thursday's annual Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond, Washington, they said. "The topic where we would like more granularity is what type of return should investors expect from the FY07 incremental investments and over how long of a time period," UBS analyst Heather Bellini wrote in a research note last week.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/07/25/HNmsspending_1.html
SugarCRM readies Sugar 4.5 for mid-August
InfoWorld - Jul 26, 2006
5, the first version of its CRM (customer relationship management) software to fully support Microsoft server products, on Aug. 15 during the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco. adCall("336","280","imu");.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/07/26/HNsugarcrm_1.html
Digging deeper in data mines
Australian IT - Jul 25, 2006
"They are facing a market in which traditional lines of revenue are drying up and they are looking for new opportunities. This is where spreading data and knowledge through the organisation can make you more intelligent. "
The evolution of BI software is similar to that of CRM systems, which in many cases took much longer than expected to become accepted as tools in many companies, Clubb says. "It has taken 10 to 12 years for CRM to go through its journey," he says. "Companies bought a data warehouse and then a front end and it took a long time before the value was really seen. BI is on the same journey. "
Where once they might have been available in only the very largest organisations, they can now be cost-effectively used by small and mid-sized companies... BI is on the same journey. "
Where once they might have been available in only the very largest organisations, they can now be cost-effectively used by small and mid-sized companies. With its eye on this trend, Microsoft has been busy incorporating a range of BI capabilities into the next version of its dominant Office software suite. Microsoft Australia information workers group director Tony Wilkinson says the next version of Office will contain a range of BI tools and features that link to other Microsoft products. "Just as word processing was once a backroom task, we want to take business intelligence and put it in the hands of all workers," he says. The dashboard capabilities in Office SharePoint Server 2007 are an example of these new BI tools. They allow users to create reports and instant views of data drawn from a range of other systems.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19869706%5E24169%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
Microsoft revenue up, but profits down for Q4
ITworld.com - Jul 21, 2006
com - Microsoft revenue up, but profits down for Q4. end its fiscal year on a bit of a high note Thursday, though income was down due to expenses and legal charges... Microsoft plans to spend $450 million on marketing and launch costs related to its two major product launches in 2007, the Windows Vista OS and Office 2007. Another $450 million will go to sales force and general marketing growth, with $1 billion being set aside for the development of high-growth products and services, such as business intelligence, unified communications and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), Liddell said. Microsoft plans to spend $500 million to expand its online business, including its adCenter advertising platform, as well as its Live services, such as Office Live, CRM Live, Windows Live Search and other Web-based offerings. Additionally, the company will spend another $300 million in general cost increases and other unspecified spending, Liddell said. One thing Liddell would not address was speculation that Windows Vista would miss its target release dates of November for business customers and January 2007 for consumers, saying only that Microsoft is still on schedule for Vista's release. However, Liddell said that it will not be until "we have the date locked in" that Microsoft can predict when launch expenses for Vista will affect the company's financial results, a comment that seemed to leave room for the release of the OS to slip further.
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/5050/060721msq4/
Microsoft Buyback: Should You Bite?
BusinessWeek - Jul 24, 2006
Adjusted for splits, the shares have drifted between $20 and $30 for more than four years (see BusinessWeek. Now that the price is up on the latest news, it could be as good a time as any for impatient shareholders to give Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer his stock back... )Meanwhile, other tech stocks may offer bigger upside. Credit Suisse analyst Jason Maynard sees superior growth chances in Red Hat (RHAT), Salesforce. com (CRM), Google (GOOG), and Yahoo, plus a better large-cap opportunity in Oracle (ORCL) because of its exposure to corporate spending. Open-source software, on-demand computing, and advertising-based business models could all cut into Microsoft's revenue, Maynard wrote in a July 21 report. He has a neutral recommendation on the stock. (Credit Suisse has an investment banking relationship with Microsoft and makes a market in its securities.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jul2006/db20060724_115939.htm
Update: Microsoft revenue up, but profits down for Q4
InfoWorld - Jul 20, 2006
8 billion, which beat Wall Street expectations of $11. 6 billion and was a 16 percent increase over the year-ago figure. However, Microsoft's net income for the quarter was down 24 percent over the previous year. The company reported net income of $2... Microsoft plans to spend $450 million on marketing and launch costs related to its two major product launches in 2007, the Windows Vista OS and Office 2007. Another $450 million will go to sales force and general marketing growth, with $1 billion being set aside for the development of high-growth products and services, such as business intelligence, unified communications and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), Liddell said. Microsoft plans to spend $500 million to expand its online business, including its adCenter advertising platform, as well as its Live services, such as Office Live, CRM Live, Windows Live Search and other Web-based offerings. Additionally, the company will spend another $300 million in general cost increases and other unspecified spending, Liddell said. One thing Liddell would not address was speculation that Windows Vista would miss its target release dates of November for business customers and January 2007 for consumers, saying only that Microsoft is still on schedule for Vista's release. However, Liddell said that it will not be until "we have the date locked in" that Microsoft can predict when launch expenses for Vista will affect the company's financial results, a comment that seemed to leave room for the release of the OS to slip further.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/07/20/HNmsrevenue_1.html
Microsoft's New, Improved Spending
BusinessWeek - Jul 21, 2006
A quarter ago, as it announced earnings, the software maker caught investors unawares with news of an increase in investment spending. On July 20, Microsoft (MSFT) had another surprise up its sleeve,.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2006/tc20060721_907153.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_more+of+today's+top+stories
SAP to ramp up attack on Oracle
InfoWorld - Jul 21, 2006
The company's on a roll. "McDermott expects Oracle to stumble in the next couple of quarters, claiming that the vendor's rise in fourth-quarter software license revenue was driven by Oracle's push to have its installed base sign maintenance licenses. As McDermott looks out over the rest of fiscal 2006, he expects growth to come in the high-end from MySAP ERP 2005, SAP's and Microsoft Corp. 's joint Duet software, SAP's hosted and on-premise CRM business and its business intelligence and analytics technologies. SAP will also be increasing its focus on the midmarket. "Sixty-five percent of our worldwide customers have revenues of less than US$500 million," he said. "We want to get the word out.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/07/21/SAPrampup_1.html
TCS turns leading employer in China
Economic Times - Jul 25, 2006
22per cent stake, while the Chinese partners have 27. However,
when Microsoft joins the venture next month, TCS will reduce its stake to 65per
cent and the Chinese counterparts will offload 2per cent and Microsoft will get
10per cent... Commenting on the IT market in China, Mr Ramadorai said
that the Chinese IT market is pegged at $30bn. Also, attrition rates in China
are higher than in India, at 15per cent, while salaries are comparable, he
added. In another deal, TCS has signed a $33m with a Saudi
Arabia-based telecom company to integrate their billing and CRM processes. The
process has to be delivered in 18 months.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1803023.cms
Salesforce goes after SAP customers
VNUNet.com - Jul 24, 2006
com is celebrating the20th update of its online service by posting an offering designed to forge linksto businesses with SAP installations. Meanwhile, rival CRM vendors haveannounced acquisitions and updates to boost their own offerings. The toolkit is intended to let customers integrateSalesforce tools with back-office applications to gain an overarching view ofcustomer data, and synchronise account information between Salesforce and SAP. The step is another in the upscale progress of Salesforce, which hasambitions to attract more custom from large organisations and shake off theperception that on-demand software is mostly attractive to smaller businesses. “There’s a typical criticism that integrating enterprise apps with on-demandis a challenge, so we have packaged up transformations, information flows andtools,” said Tim Knight, AppExchange technical director at Salesforce... 9 suite withextended support for mobile devices. But CDC is now unlikely to add Onyx to itsportfolio, because Onyx last week reaffirmed its intention to merge with holdinggroup M2M. Elsewhere, InvisibleCRM, a startup firm that develops software linkingSalesforce with Microsoft environments, last week secured an extra $1. All ApplicationsLike this story? Spread the news by clicking below:.
http://www.vnunet.com/itweek/news/2160923/salesforce-goes-sap-clients
Google R&D Pays Dividends
BusinessWeek - Jul 21, 2006
search queries handled by Google jumped 55% over the past year, according to comScore Media Metrix. Yahoo's search queries rose 21%, and those handled by MSN, owned by Microsoft (MSFT), grew only 8%. Both rivals fell short of the overall market growth of 30%. "The opportunities before us are really unlimited at this point," remarked Google CEO Eric Schmidt on a conference call with Wall Street analysts. That may be a little too sanguine. But with Google's search business firing on all cylinders, its weaknesses won't likely trip up the company anytime soon.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2006/tc20060721_996440.htm?chan=top+news_top+news
BI's new power users rely on advanced search
InfoWorld - Jul 20, 2006
But the frequent inability of employees to locate the results they need from high-end BI applications is prompting several enterprise search vendors to step in and address the challenge. Because BI relies on data generated by accounting, sales, CRM systems, and other back-end applications, it represents a lot of data. IT departments that have made substantial investments in BI packages from Cognos, Information Builders, Oracle, and SAP, among others, are looking at ways to better expose that data and make it all actionable at a much faster clip. Meanwhile, the number of workers who need daily access to BI data to be more effective at their jobs steadily rises. "A lot of things are changing in the industry to help expose more BI information," says Frank Brooks, chief data architect at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee. "We had reached the point where we had so much BI information that it was difficult to go and find just one piece of it... Rather than, say, waiting for biweekly reports and sifting through them, employees can now access a portal to search an array of applications where BI information is stored. Brooks is one of many IT managers taking advantage of the increasing cross-over between enterprise search and BI. Following news in April of Google OneBox, which extended the reach of the Google Search Appliance to BI, IBM and Microsoft announced new products and features for customers who want to marry search functionality with BI to get real-time business analytics into the hands of more employees. In May, Fast Search and Transfer joined its Enterprise Search Platform with Cognos 8 Business Intelligence solution to deliver corporate content directly to workers who are not necessarily sophisticated BI consumers. According to Vinod Baya, director at.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/infoworld/article/06/07/20/30FEsearchbiz_3.html
HP to Offer Networked Storage for Smaller Businesses
PC World - Jul 24, 2006
Small-business users typically hold their data on anywhere from 3 to 14 servers, adding extra servers as they grow, Young says. In market research, HP found that 60 percent to 70 percent of those users said they had continued to use this "direct attached storage" technique because its simplicity allows them to maintain it without a full-time IT department, and because the only alternatives in today's market cost $20,000 to $30,000. To reach those users, HP has designed its new products to be able to host client applications, e-mail that runs on Exchange or Lotus servers, and ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) databases, all without requiring customers to install a fiber channel infrastructure. The new line of products will protect data by duplicating it in snapshots stored on the same box or by creating tape backups on an attached device. In an effort to keep prices low, the new offerings will not include data encryption. System Details HP would not reveal details of the system design, but says it will include shared application server storage, a Microsoft Windows-based file server, and proprietary intellectual property to provide data management and protection. Rather than using revolutionary hardware, it relies on the wide adoption of common industry standards, as well as on a tight integration of domains that have been separated in previous designs, says Ash Ashutosh, vice president and chief technology officer of HP's StorageWorks division... The new line of products will protect data by duplicating it in snapshots stored on the same box or by creating tape backups on an attached device. In an effort to keep prices low, the new offerings will not include data encryption. System Details HP would not reveal details of the system design, but says it will include shared application server storage, a Microsoft Windows-based file server, and proprietary intellectual property to provide data management and protection. Rather than using revolutionary hardware, it relies on the wide adoption of common industry standards, as well as on a tight integration of domains that have been separated in previous designs, says Ash Ashutosh, vice president and chief technology officer of HP's StorageWorks division. Recommend this story?.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,126520-page,1-c,networkinghardware/article.html
On-demand is a growing tech force Salesforce.com has lead in big off...
San Francisco Chronicle - Jul 23, 2006
It is really a shift away from how you typically think of software. " On-demand computing has been most widely used for keeping track of sales, marketing and customer support, also known as customer resources management, or CRM. The market for on-demand CRM grew by nearly 70 percent to $500 million in 2005. Sharon Mertz, a research director at Gartner Research, expects it to grow another 40 to 50 percent in 2006. "We continue to see high demand for it this year," she said. Small, privately held firms, such as San Mateo's NetSuite, have been aggressively pushing to gain more share. Highlighting the growth opportunities that the on-demand software market offers, technology's big guns, led by Oracle, SAP and Microsoft, have also entered the ring with their versions of software-as-a-service offerings... "We continue to see high demand for it this year," she said. Small, privately held firms, such as San Mateo's NetSuite, have been aggressively pushing to gain more share. Highlighting the growth opportunities that the on-demand software market offers, technology's big guns, led by Oracle, SAP and Microsoft, have also entered the ring with their versions of software-as-a-service offerings. But it is Salesforce. com that continues to dominate the space with 60 percent of the market. The company's user base has grown from about 15,500 customers with 267,000 subscribers in May 2005 to 22,700 customers with 444,000 subscribers this May. The company apparently became a victim of its success.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/23/BUGJ1K36NG1.DTL
Goodbye.
