10th September 2009
Microsoft’s Crispin Read, who leads product management and marketing for Microsoft Corp.’s portfolio of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and is responsible for ERP strategy and execution worldwide popped into London last week, so FSN took the opportunity to catch up with him. Microsoft it will be remembered has a clutch of ERP products based on the acquisitions several years back of Navision, Great Plains, Solomon Software and Axapta. Redmond has long since abandoned any ideas of merging the applications which have trodden parallel paths for a considerable period. So what’s new in Microsoft’s strategy for mid-market ERP – disappointingly very little that’s newsworthy. Read, acknowledges that the organisation has not been vocal for the last 18 months and since taking on his role last December is promising more regular announcements and news, dangling more interesting things ahead. But for now the business seems to be refocusing more tightly on the mid-market, limiting its aspirations to go too far upstream or downstream and concentrating on five vertical markets. It all feels a little dull after Redmond’s exciting entry into business applications a few years back.
