CRM Part of Microsoft, Alisoft Deal in China

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Microsoft (News - Alert) and Alisoft announced that they will provide hosted business-class e-mail service running on the Microsoft Hosted Exchange platform, targeted at China's more than 40 million small and medium enterprises.

 

The SMEs will be integrated with Alisoft's flagship product "E Wang Da Jin" for SMEs.


This initiative follows a Memorandum of Understanding signed in April 2007 by Microsoft and Alisoft, which stated that both companies would "pursue strategic co-operation in the informationization of SMEs."

Using the online software service platform built by Alisoft, the business-class e-mail service will be offered to SMEs in China through a software-as-a-service model.

Alisoft E Wang Da Jin is described by the Alisofties as "China's first business management tool of its kind" with e-commerce and online software services. The product has customer relationship management (CRM) and inventory management.

In March Jia Juan, an analyst with CCID Consulting, said the launch of enterprise hosted e-mail service as SaaS (News - Alert) in China presents "better business opportunities for Microsoft, especially with SMEs."

 

According to Microsoft officials, beginning September 1 customers will be able to move any of 41 Microsoft server applications between servers within a server farm as often as necessary without paying additional licensing fees, and can get expanded specialized technical support as well.

 

"Businesses are taking steps to make their IT operations more dynamic and are delving into virtualization as a cornerstone strategy," said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualization in the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft.

 

Microsoft also will begin a worldwide series of "Get Virtual Now" events this month that will showcase Microsoft virtualization products and partner products, reaching more than 250,000 IT workers, the company said.

 

Microsoft said it is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products.

 

With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.