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Microsoft launches new assault on business apps
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By Bill Rigby
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is making its strongest push yet into the steadily growing business software market in the hope that it can create another multibillion-dollar business.
The world's biggest software company, which...
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A worker prepares the logo on the Microsoft stand on the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover February 26, 2011. The world's largest IT fair CeBIT opens its doors on March 1 and runs through March 5.
Credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz
By Bill Rigby
SEATTLE |
Tue Apr 12, 2011 2:00am EDT
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is making its strongest push yet into the steadily growing business software market in the hope that it can create another multibillion-dollar business.
The world's biggest software company, which still gets the majority of its sales from its Windows and Office franchises, is hoping it can wrestle market share from heavyweights SAP AG and Oracle Corp, and upstart online vendor Salesforce.com Inc.
"The opportunities to make a good business economically are wonderful," said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer in a telephone interview on Monday. "We're pretty pumped up."
Research firm IDC predicts that companies will spend $118 billion a year worldwide on "enterprise applications" by 2014, referring to the software they use to automate accounting, human resources, sales, supply chains and other operations.
Ballmer declined to target a percentage figure his company hopes to win, but thinks it can outpace the leaders.
"If we don't dramatically outgrow Oracle and SAP I'd be disappointed," Ballmer said.
Earlier in the day, Ballmer unveiled the company's latest plans at Microsoft's business software conference in Atlanta, attended by about 9,000 users.
He gave a preview of the company's new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software -- the flagship of its business applications efforts -- which will soon be accessible online or "in the cloud" for the first time.
GROWING MARKET
Worldwide businesses spent about $21 billion on ERP software last year, according to tech research firm Gartner, and that figure is set to grow about 5 percent a year over the next few years.
Microsoft is currently a distant fifth in the market, behind SAP, Oracle, Sage Group Plc and Infor Global Solutions.
The other main business segment is customer relationship management (CRM), or programs for organizing a company's contacts with customers and sales activities, which is worth about $10 billion a year and set to grow at around 7 percent a year, according to Gartner.
Microsoft is fourth in that market, behind SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com, which pioneered the "cloud" approach, where users access programs over the web rather than use ones installed on their own computers.
That presented a direct challenge to Microsoft, whose dominance in operating systems is based on installed software, but the company is fighting back and embracing the cloud.
It moved a version of its CRM product online, and said on Monday that its Microsoft Dynamics ERP application will run on its Azure platform, which Microsoft created as the basis for its cloud-based offerings.
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