Microsoft exec: Dynamics CRM, AX aims to feast Oracle, SAP switchers
Microsoft sees a good chunk of its Dynamics CRM business coming from Oracle's Siebel unit.
Speaking at a J.P. Morgan investment conference, Kirill Tatarinov, president of Microsoft's business solutions division, said "switching from Siebel is becoming very popular in large enterprise."
Tatarinov outlined the Dynamics CRM customer base and kicked Siebel:
Majority of our install base today is on-premises. Of course we have been in the market with Dynamics CRM for over seven years now and we have over, we have approximately 40,000 customers and most of them on-premises deployment. We are also seeing mixed deployments and that is very interesting to see how organizations implement some part of their business in the cloud and another part which is more mission-critical, they implement it on-premise so that they can really catch the data and they can really control it.
We also see customers who start in the cloud and move on-premise, and we also see customers who start on-premise and move in the cloud. And that is essentially for us reaffirmation of our strategy where we give customers ability to do that. The same configuration, the same customization that we offer on-premise, on the cloud they can continue to run, depending on their needs. They get what they required.
On the competitive side, switching from Siebel is becoming very popular in large enterprise. They're still approximately 4,800 large enterprises that run Siebel today, according to our surveys. We have not seen a single happy Siebel customer and we view it as a huge opportunity for us. It is aging technology, it is a bad product and we are poised to help those customers convert.
It is not a secret that years ago Microsoft used to run Siebel internally to manage our sales force. We had very unhappy sales force when we were on Siebel internally. Eighteen months ago we turned Siebel off and replaced it with Dynamics CRM.
Tatarinov talked CRM in the broader context of Microsoft's software for large companies. He noted that Dynamics AX is increasingly competing with SAP and Oracle for enterprise resource planning software. He added that Dell is using Dynamics AX to run its plants. Chanel is also using Dynamics AX to run its retail sales.
He said:
We are going head-to-head and we are also sort of going into SAP and Oracle environments and implementing different additional business workloads for those companies who may have SAP in their headquarters or Oracle in their headquarters. I think the market where we go the most head-to-head right now is this very interesting, very vibrant and dynamic market that is right below Global 2000.
So think of it of companies in between $1 billion and $5 billion in revenues. Thousands of employees typically depending on which particular industry they are in.
That market in Oracle and SAP being predominantly focused on Global 2000, in our view that market right now is really open for modernization.
It's sort of due to do view for the ERP refresh cycle which happens every 12 to 15 years and it is a huge opportunity and that is where we see the biggest opportunity for Dynamics AX.