You cannot be serious!
By Moshe Zeidman in Reader
Posted in Microsoft Dynamics, IT Success, business goals, Microsoft on March 27, 2008 at 2:28 pm
“The biggest decision we’ve made is to push into business applications,” declared Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Dynamics-based Convergence conference in Florida last week. “I still get asked “is Microsoft a serious player in business applications?’” The answer it seems is, yes. “This is mission-critical for us,” thundered Ballmer. (myCustomer.com 18/03/08)
The question of whether Microsoft is serious about business software is really a non-starter. During 2007, Microsoft invested $1.6 billion in pure business applications research. I don’t mean development - paying all of those coders, consultants and project managers et al. - that’s something else. What we are talking about is an amount of money invested in ONE YEAR which is roughly the combined 2006 revenue from the UK’s largest software house The Sage Group Plc. (£892.4m)
How was the money spent? It seems that a lot of role based interviews were conducted. As IT Manager you might be asked “How exactly do you go about allocating your annual budget”? (Good question really. Any answers?) In all seriousness, what Microsoft has done is to explore how people go about their daily tasks, and what tools they need to carry them out.
The combined results from this work will define the development and refinement of their Dynamics range of products. I bet Sage and others would love to have the opportunity to examine this research -( I’m afraid I do not have a link to the relevant material), or at least to carry out similar analysis themselves, but who can afford this luxury.
We talk about how the Internet has made a level playing field for the smallest of SME’s to compete against the Big Boys, but the power of monopolies has not suddenly disappeared. It is hard to say that Microsoft will have gone terribly far wide of the mark with the introduction of a new feature or process in their business suite of products. $1.6 billion can’t be wrong!
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