General Consultant Discussion

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2013/06/03/microsoft-planning-major-restructuring-report/ I still don't see how Microsoft Dynamics, especially ERP makes sense in their model. My bet is they look to sell it off. Just pure speculation.

Would they want to hang onto it as a hedge against sexier companies such as Salesforce? Or maybe ditch ERP and buy Salesforce.

I've always scratched my head over MS in ERP -- the market space hasn't grown at rates that MS needed for a decade at least. CRM gets sold mainly into MS shops, where IT really likes the pure MS stack it requires. Its win rate outside of that target is far lower. Commonly spouted rationales by analysts have been that MS did CRM only to sell its stack. As the CRM market consolidates to sfdc + the rest, and with more large firms getting comfortable with sfdc (which uses NO MS stack) it is hard to see why MS keeps the whole ERP-CRM business. I think MS is coming to terms with the fact that it will not be a big business apps supplier. I won't be surprised if MS simply spins the whole Dynamics operation out as a separate company. But then i thought that would happen a few years ago, too....

Didn't they bury the ERP into the MS Office division making it even tougher to track? Pretty sure the results are buried somewhere making analysis very difficult.

Yes, I think that's where they went. After its first ~5 yrs, MS became increasingly stingy about making outside analysis possible. Which says a lot in itself. I suspect that it's a b/e operation growing less than the CRM market rate, and at the ERP market rate.

@MarkChinsky I was thinking about this just the other day. It seems to me that it would make sense for them to sell this part of their business off. The challenge would come from the fact that they have integrated in the MS stack so tightly that they lose the gateway drug effect. Even if it's a loss leader, it provides a great foot in the door for businesses that otherwise might be distracted by Apple, Google and other sources of productivity applications and server infrastructure.

IF they sell - to whom? Or is it who? I can't see anyone except an Oracle or SAP being interested. Seems way to high end and complex for Intuit or Sage.

I was thinking SAP.

It's a large enough operation that it could be stand alone. Basically sell it off to private equity. But there's also the possibility of just leaving it alone. It doesn't affect MS numbers, nor does it require cash beyond what it produces. It's not like Sage which had 2 CRMs with one essentially selling into a market space not really consistent with the rest of the company. It doesn't really conflict with its others development partners, and could be a useful test bed for business Cloud marketing.

I like Jerry's point. I could see MS dropping down to just AX or NAV (or whatever their names are) and selling one off or announcing EOL.

Peronsally I wish they would sell NAV off. AX is to microsoft as X3 is to sage. A big complex expensive solution that they recommend to every pizzaria they call into and its well known outside of MS that its their love child. It makes selling other MS ERP products tough because you are competing with their own stupid marketing. NAV can go toe to toe with AX in many scenarios and is far superior in many cases, but you can't get that point across if the publisher says something else. They sure won't just EOL NAV since it has more paying end users than the other 3 ERP products combined by a wide margin