Amazon.com has been noted previously as developing a marketplace for software application services, while CRM suddenly becomes a hot concept.
In the span of a week, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce.com have ramped up their efforts in the CRM space. Salesforce believes it can further build on its model by offering AppExchange, a virtual center for testing and acquiring new applications to integrate into existing Salesforce.com installations, according to ZDNet.
Salesforce describes the service, destined for launch by the end of the year, like this:
“The AppExchange is the world’s first on-demand application-sharing service. It’s a new online center where salesforce.com subscribers, partners, and developers can share their on-demand applications for everything from handling expense management to tracking purchasing, monitoring recruiting, and beyond.”
Unlike Amazon’s efforts, Salesforce will focus on its own customers, as it now finds two big players trying to push their way further into the CRM market. Microsoft invited a number of mid-sized business types to Redmond last week for its inaugural Business Summit. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer spoke to attendees as Microsoft began a push to reach more smaller businesses with its software.
Oracle made the big play on Monday, announcing it had purchased Siebel Systems for $5.85 billion. That reunites Oracle head Larry Ellison with Tom Siebel, who was once Mr. Ellison’s top salesman at Oracle.
The battle over CRM, as it pertains to Microsoft and Oracle, has been cast by some sources as a fight for the database market. Oracle has been expanding into applications from its origins as a database company, while Microsoft went from just operating systems to adding applications like Office and SQL Server.
CRM software presents one more way for those companies to keep customers under a single brand umbrella. Microsoft doesn’t want to see new users of its Dynamics line running an Oracle database on the back end at the expense of client access licenses it could be selling to enterprises.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
