Microsoft in the SME Market

Microsoft announces a change in leadership around their SME application product line - Dynamics. Satya Nadella takes over from Doug Burgum.

MS has clearly lost momentum it could have had from the acquisitions of Great Plains, Navision etc. The product line seems buried in all the other publicity, good and bad, that Microsoft seems to be cursed with.

In the meantime SAP and Oracle (with acquired JDE products among other moves) have improved their offerings in the higher end of the SME market. But SaaS vendors - NetSuite, salesforce.com RightNow and others have really benefited from the vacuum.

The Great Plains franchise and reseller channel, in particular, continue to be strong. My contacts in that market say they continue to do well in spite of the turmoil at the mother ship.

As an aside, Doug Burgum is good friends with Steve Ballmer (classmates at Stanford).  Doug is planning to leave the company next summer. Should we read anything in to Steve's plans from that?

Update: more on (at least the lower end of) SME market - Google and Intuit with Quickbooks are just announcing their collaboration.

Comments

[Simon G]

FYI, in EMEA Navision seems to be doing well.
I noted Doug Bergums' departure in my blog - I think, and hope, it will be a good thing. MBS needs to start bringing in people with ERP experience and understanding of the industry issues, not hiring insiders who think selling ERP is like selling SQL Server.

[viinnie mirchandani]

Simon, Satya is even more of a MS insider. At least Doug with GP understood the SME channel. That is my question mark...