Microsoft hosts CRM
Microsoft hosts CRM
By Geoff Nairn
Published: May 14 2008 04:17 | Last updated: May 14 2008 04:17
Microsoft has launched its hosted customer relationship management service, Dynamics CRM Online. It is designed to steal business from online CRM pioneers such as Salesforce.com. It comes with 5GB of storage and costs $44 a month for each user; Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus with 20GB and more features, costs $59. The Microsoft-hosted service is limited to North America although Microsoft partners can offer it in other territories.
● Salesforce.com has teamed up with Google to offer Salesforce.com for GoogleApps. By offering tight integration between Salesforce.com’s hosted CRM service and Google’s online productivity applications, which include word processing, calendar and e-mail, the two firms hope more businesses will abandon packaged software for their cloud-based computing models.
● SAP has teamed up with Microsoft to help banks that have caught the service-oriented architecture (SOA) bug but don’t know where to start. The aim of the newly created Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is to let banks and vendors pool knowledge of how to apply SOA concepts to banking IT systems, many of which use legacy technologies.
● You’ve built your SOA system, but does it work? Hewlett-Packard offers new versions of its SOA testing products, HP Service Test and HP Service Test Management. HP also unveiled related software to manage SOAs once up and running.
● Going green? IBM aims to make the process easier with Active Energy Manager (AEM). The new software allows IT managers to control energy use for servers, storage, and networking as well as the air conditioning and power management systems that keep the data centre running. IBM is also offering an energy certification programme which allows businesses to trade their energy savings for cash.
● Macintosh users often get overlooked by mainstream IT vendors. Not any more. EMC has unveiled an online back-up service for small businesses and consumers running Macs. MozyHome for Mac offers 2GB of online back-up for free, while for $4.95 a month you can have unlimited online back-up capacity. Once the initial back-up is done, successive back-ups are incremental and so much quicker – just don’t try doing it over a dial-up connection. A Mac version of its business-class back-up service, MozyPro, is also in the works.
● Going, going, nearly gone. Outlook Express is still around although Microsoft seems determined to kill off its free e-mail program in favour of its successor Windows Live Mail. The latest nail in the coffin comes when Outlook Express users try to access a free Microsoft Hotmail account. From June 30, they will not be able to, as support for the “legacy protocol” used by OE is being withdrawn. Corporate PCs usually come with Outlook instead of Outlook Express and should be unaffected.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Geoff Nairn
Published: May 14 2008 04:17 | Last updated: May 14 2008 04:17
Microsoft has launched its hosted customer relationship management service, Dynamics CRM Online. It is designed to steal business from online CRM pioneers such as Salesforce.com. It comes with 5GB of storage and costs $44 a month for each user; Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus with 20GB and more features, costs $59. The Microsoft-hosted service is limited to North America although Microsoft partners can offer it in other territories.
● Salesforce.com has teamed up with Google to offer Salesforce.com for GoogleApps. By offering tight integration between Salesforce.com’s hosted CRM service and Google’s online productivity applications, which include word processing, calendar and e-mail, the two firms hope more businesses will abandon packaged software for their cloud-based computing models.
● SAP has teamed up with Microsoft to help banks that have caught the service-oriented architecture (SOA) bug but don’t know where to start. The aim of the newly created Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is to let banks and vendors pool knowledge of how to apply SOA concepts to banking IT systems, many of which use legacy technologies.
● You’ve built your SOA system, but does it work? Hewlett-Packard offers new versions of its SOA testing products, HP Service Test and HP Service Test Management. HP also unveiled related software to manage SOAs once up and running.
● Going green? IBM aims to make the process easier with Active Energy Manager (AEM). The new software allows IT managers to control energy use for servers, storage, and networking as well as the air conditioning and power management systems that keep the data centre running. IBM is also offering an energy certification programme which allows businesses to trade their energy savings for cash.
● Macintosh users often get overlooked by mainstream IT vendors. Not any more. EMC has unveiled an online back-up service for small businesses and consumers running Macs. MozyHome for Mac offers 2GB of online back-up for free, while for $4.95 a month you can have unlimited online back-up capacity. Once the initial back-up is done, successive back-ups are incremental and so much quicker – just don’t try doing it over a dial-up connection. A Mac version of its business-class back-up service, MozyPro, is also in the works.
● Going, going, nearly gone. Outlook Express is still around although Microsoft seems determined to kill off its free e-mail program in favour of its successor Windows Live Mail. The latest nail in the coffin comes when Outlook Express users try to access a free Microsoft Hotmail account. From June 30, they will not be able to, as support for the “legacy protocol” used by OE is being withdrawn. Corporate PCs usually come with Outlook instead of Outlook Express and should be unaffected.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
posted by Albert van Grondelle at 7:52 AM
0 comments
