Microsoft applies a "Yahoo" strategy to increase the power of its ERP product.
Rather than buying the entire company just to get its hands on some desirable technology, Microsoft has purchased four technologies in an attempt to beef up Enterprise Resource Planning functionality of its Dynamics product.
It has acquired:
- Process manufacturing software from Fullscope Inc.
- Management software from Computer Generated Solutions Inc., which delivers a single system to manage projects and resources, execute financial transactions and customer billing, and match resources with client assignments
- Two retail technologies, from LS Retail EHF and To-Increase Denmark A/S. These will help Microsoft offer retail functions that integrate store management with POS merchandising.
These technologies expand Dynamics AX’s appeal to vertical industries and allow the product to better compete with likes of Oracle. Indeed, Microsoft couldn’t resist one jab at Oracle in its press release.
” …other ERP vendors are cutting corners or trying to reconcile multiple industry offerings as a result of acquiring several companies,” said Crispin Read, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics ERP.”
While improvements to its ERP product are interesting, the fact that Microsoft is using a “Yahoo model” to buy just the technology and not the whole company is more interesting. I’d like to see it apply the same strategy to some of its other line-of-business software platforms (Forefront, BizTalk Server, even Windows Live) to help them not just match competitors products, but leapfrog them.
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