Microsoft;s Software+Services (S+S) strategy arrives in a great number of guises. At its Convergence 2008 conference in Orlando this week for its business-applications clients and partners, Microsoft highlighted but yet another one of its S+S forms: Third-party service extensions to its on-premise software program.Microsoft;s enterprise applications include four diverse ERP suites,
Office 2010 Serial, plus its Dynamics CRM providing. Microsoft has made noises about delivering variations of its Axapta, Excellent Plains, Solomon and Navision ERP goods that may be multi-tenant and Microsoft-hosted (without firm because of dates up to now). And Dynamics CRM 4.0, the most recent edition of Microsoft;s CRM product, may be deployed by buyers in on-premise, partner-hosted and/or Microsoft-hosted configurations.(Microsoft reconfirmed this week that its Dynamics CRM Live four.0 release might be “broadly accessible” in the spring of 2008. Not sure if that is Microspeak for moving from beta to final, or just talking about a broader beta….)At the Convergence conference on March 12, Microsoft announced that it also would make available paid company extensions to its on-premise Microsoft ERP and CRM goods. (I haven;t seen prices for these published anywhere but. I have a question in to Microsoft about pricing.) The companies unveiled today: Payment company: Fraud prevention technology from PayPal and Chase Paymentech Solutions, for those using credit cards.Marketplace support: Integration with eBay allows buyers to sell their goods on eBay as well as through their own Web stores and offline channels.Keyword marketing company: Campaign tracking and management for search engine marketing (via Microsoft;s adCenter, I am assuming). This isn;t the first time Microsoft has unveiled support extensions to its software. Last year, the business rolled out various third-party services (including credit-card processing, marketplace solutions and payroll services) to its Office Accounting Express 2007 product.And earlier this year,
Office Professional, Microsoft announced it would follow a similar technique for its Office Reside Small Organization company. (So, in this case,
Office 2007 Pro Key, we;re talking providers extensions to a service, rather than software program.)Paid extensions to Microsoft;s recently consolidated SKU of Office Live Tiny Small business incorporate Store Manager, a hosted e-commerce providing from Microsoft for $39.95 per month, that can help buyers sell items on their own site,
Office Standard 2010, as well as on eBay; custom domain name and e-mail support,
Microsoft Office Professional 2007, which will provide buyers with private domain-name registration, as well as 100 company-branded e-mail addresses, each with 5 GB of storage. Microsoft is offering that services for free for the first year and $14.95 per year after that.Are any of these kinds of Microsoft and third-party service extensions of interest to you users of Microsoft small business programs?