The New State of CRM

According to AMR Research, SAP has overtaken Siebel in global market share for customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The report also says that SAP CRM is growing much faster than Siebel and doesn't lag significantly in functionality. On the other hand, SAP CRM ends up as 'shelfware' much more often than Siebel.

While these two rivals battle it out atop the enterprise segment, look out for Microsoft downstream -- it's growing faster than Salesforce.com, and has bigger CRM revenues.

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It's also true that Microsoft is investing more into CRM than SAP as well, and has been listening very well to its customers, to the extent that the new release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is a major improvement. But perhaps the biggest differenciator for Microsoft is the building of bridges between CRM and the rest of the Microsoft environment. This includes Microsoft Office, which is becoming increasingly more open and flexible, SQL Reporting Services, SharePoint Services, and InfoPath. Not to mention Live Communcations Server, and new investments in VOIP, Content Management, Collaboration, etc.

The bottom line is that Microsoft is delivering a cohesive environment for the desktop, whether that is delivered in the classic desktop mode or as a Service Oriented Architecture (over a browser.)

And with substantial new capabilities coming in the area of BI and structured reporting, no-one else can deliver the complete, easy-to-use, flexibile environment for the Knowledge worker that Microsoft can and is doing.

You don't have to like it, but you can't refute it.

Bruce McIntyre