NEWS&ANALYSIS

“Salesforce.com runs multitenancy the platform level, we’ve done a tremendous

CRM becomes where everyone is on the same code

base, so when they do an upgrade, every-
one gets the upgrade,” said Liz Herbert,
amount of work to make sure you can build
new [customizations] very easily by adding
new system objects without writing new

more ‘dynamic’ an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., in

MICROSOFT HOSTED SERVICES,
SALESFORCE’S SANDBOX DEBUT
Cambridge, Mass. “For Microsoft, the plus
is that partners can be hosting vertical solu-
code. You can add system objects, define re-
lationships [and] have Web services gen-
erated without writing any new code.”
tions, so the buyer gets hosted, vertical Sandbox, available for $25 per month for
offerings. The downside is that

By Renee Boucher Ferguson

because everyone is running on
their own code, when it comes
CRM: In an evolving state
to upgrades, [partners] need

T
he customer relationship man-
agement landscape continued its rapid
evolution last week, as vendors rolled
out new and updated offerings designed
to give enterprises greater control over
their customer relationships.
Microsoft Corp. announced last week
its long-awaited Dynamics CRM 3.0, which
brings a hosted capability through part-
ners, rounds out the suite with market-
ing capabilities, and adds new custom-
ization and integration capabilities that
will allow Microsoft to sell into larger mar-
kets. And Salesforce.com Inc. will an-
nounce this week its Sandbox software,
which provides on-demand testing capa-
bilities for its AppExchange applications.
Microsoft is turning to partners to pro-
vide its Dynamics CRM 3.0 hosted services.
However, what Microsoft provides to part-
ners with Dynamics CRM 3.0 is a single-
tenant model, which means upgrades come
on a one-off basis, as opposed to the more
common multitenancy model in vogue with
most hosted software providers.
to distribute that upgrade or What
patch to all users.” Microsoft’s
Salesforce.com agrees with Dynamics
Herbert’s assessment. CRM 3.0
“If there’s anything we’ve
learned in doing software as a
service, [it’s that] you can’t try Salesforce.com’s • On demand
and soft-host client/server Sandbox
applications and try and make
it scale,” said George Hu, vice
president and general manager
of applications at the San Fran-
cisco company, which Micro-
soft has vowed to beat. “That
plays out a lot of ways in how well the tech-
nology scales. With single tenancy, you
have to upgrade every single box.”
For Microsoft, however, Dynamics CRM
3.0 is a “very, very major release,” said Brad
Wilson, general manager for Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, in Redmond, Wash.
“Up till now we haven’t offered a full
suite; it was missing one of the three core
elements of a core suite,” said Wilson. “At
Why
• Hosted version through partners
• Marketing suite
• Scheduling module
• Professional (enterprise) Edition
• Customizable objects
• For Salesforce.com’s parallel
production environment for
testing and training
• Geared to enterprise users
• Works with AppExchange
applications
current enterprise CRM users, enables var-
ious components to be brought over from
the test environment to the production envi-
ronment. It works with any of the applica-
tions in Salesforce.com’s AppExchange envi-
ronment, the company’s on-demand
application marketplace. It will replicate any
native application that Salesforce.com or its
customers have created—with the excep-
tion of composite applications, Hu said. ´

Oracle partners with Broadbeam database, MSS ExpressQ is

deployed to power the com-
munications aspect of AA’s
By Brian Fonseca agement capabilities to a vari- by synchronization with and VIXEN (Vehicle Information
racle corp. is partnering ety of major devices, including deletion of mobile applications. crossed with an Electronic Note-

O with Broadbeam Corp. to

extend the reach of its Ora-
cle Database Lite 10g Release 2.
Oracle, of Redwood Shores,
Calif., this week will announce
that its mobile database fea-
turing integration with Broad-
beam’s MSS (Mobile Systems
Solution) ExpressQ is currently
shipping. Customers will have
to acquire both technologies
separately to use the prebuilt
interface between the two.
By activating MSS ExpressQ
in tandem with Oracle Data-
base Lite 10g Release 2 through
a server configuration, custom-
ers can extend new device man-
laptops and PDAs that do not
possess built-in SMS (Short
Message Service) or proprietary
message listener functionality,
said Janet Boudris, CEO of
Broadbeam, in Cranbury, N.J.
Boudris said the new part-
nership between Oracle and
Broadbeam will allow mobile
workers to compensate for un-
expected coverage gaps or
intermittent communications
when moving between 802.11
and WAN deployments. This
improvement will occur by
more easily retrieving mobile
device and software manage-
ment information, as well as
By using the message queu-
ing capabilities within MSS
ExpressQ, Oracle mobile data-
base customers can store and
forward device management
commands and download or
send updates—with delivery
confirmation—as soon as they
are within network reach.
Chris Bailey, head of busi-
ness systems for The Automo-
bile Association Ltd., in Bas-
ingstoke, England, is currently
using Oracle Database Lite 9i as
the repository for storing the
organization’s technical and
diagnostic information. In con-
junction with Oracle’s mobile
book) project.
“Communication for our
patrolmen is absolutely critical,
as we deal with 4.5 million
breakdowns a year on the road-
side,” said Bailey. “We have 15
million members of Automo-
bile Association. What Broad-
beam [coupled with Oracle]
allowed us to do was integrate
the command and control sys-
tem, so the [VIXEN] application
was then dynamically dispatch-
ing work from the call handlers
that would take the break-
down detail, then send that info
through to the PC or the route
guidance unit.” ´

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