More news from Seattle this week. Microsoft has annouced that they will offer their third hosted service in the next year. Seems to me that Microsoft has found their way back in certain parts of their business, their hosted services is one of them. The writing has been on the wall for a number of years with Microsoft acquiring Remote Desktop software from companies like Citrix. Now that they have abundant experience it appears that they are going to release all of their current product offerings on a hosted basis. It will be interesting to see how they are received.

Microsoft Corp.’s Dynamics CRM product will become the company’s third Live hosted service next year, following in the footsteps of its Windows Live and Office Live software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. Microsoft plans to introduce CRM Live in the second quarter of 2007, initially only in North America, said Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The company won’t limit the number of users CRM Live can support, although at first it will be aimed at small businesses — typically those with eight to 10 seats. The service initially will be operated and managed from within Microsoft’s own data centers. Going forward, customers will have three deployment options: They can choose CRM Live hosted by Microsoft, CRM hosted by Microsoft partners, or run the software themselves in their own premises. All three versions of CRM will have the same code base, so customers will be able to switch between different deployment models depending on their needs, Wilson said. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, was expected to highlight Dynamics CRM Live in a speech at the start of the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston, which runs through Thursday. “There is still a fairly large, untapped - more available

Microsoft, Hosted+Software, CRM, CRM+Live

tags: crm, crm+live, hosted+software, microsoft