Apps vendors seek partner help

Enterprise applications vendors are increasingly turning to business partners to create value-add features and services for their offerings in an effort to better appeal to customers.

When Microsoft announced Version 3.0 of its CRM suite last week, in addition to a new marketing module, the company also announced a new subscription-based licensing model for VARs that sell Microsoft CRM as a hosted solution.

Siebel Systems and Antenna Software, which provides integration of wireless with enterprise applications, also announced last week a hosted and managed service to extend Siebel CRM OnDemand to any mobile platform.

Before Microsoft CRM 3.0, Microsoft’s 1,700 VARs and hosting providers had  dpaid for a full license “up front,” according to Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft CRM. Under the new model, partners can purchase the license on a subscription basis, with fees based on the number of customers using the product.

Wilson said Microsoft relies on its network of resellers to do most of the integration work with other Microsoft business solutions.

Although CRM 3.0 does come with out-of-the-box integration for Great Plains software, integration with Navision and Solomon ERP business solutions come from partners. Axapta integration is “coming shortly” from third parties, Wilson said.

Josh Greenbaum, chief analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting, said Microsoft has to do even more with the integration of other Microsoft business solution applications  with CRM.

“CRM is more about integration with ERP, financial planning, order management, and service management. CRM must be functional with respect to these applications or Microsoft will lose an important opportunity for itself and its customers,” Greenbaum said.

Version 3.0 of the Microsoft CRM marketing module includes list management, campaign management, marketing resource management, and closed-loop response management.

In the meantime, the Antenna announcement follows an intense collaboration with Siebel, which makes extensive use of Siebel’s Web-services platform.

Antenna’s A3 SmartClient for Siebel CRM OnDemand will give Siebel customers access to and management of Siebel CRM OnDemand on all major mobile devices, and will use any one of about 200 different wireless carriers both nationally and internationally.

In many respects it is similar to a deal Antenna announced in June with Cingular. In that deal, Cingular customers will gain access to most of their enterprise solutions — about 40 in all — on any mobile device that uses the Cingular network.

The relationship between Antenna and Siebel highlights the traditional enterprise question of whether to build or buy technology; only now it is taking place in the mobile space.

“If they have a big, highly trained staff an enterprise might continue to do things in-house,” said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies. “But getting companies like Antenna coming to market with extremely good applications makes a lot of sense.”

Microsoft CRM 3.0 will be available in the fourth quarter to current customers and generally available to new customers in first quarter 2006.