Thatcherism vs. the SPIV POV: A nice little debate for the weekend

The CRM media has been full of Microsoft buzz this week, thanks to mainly to releases and announcements coming out of their worldwide partner conference in Boston. Biggest of all the big hype, of course, was the news about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SaaS offerings.

Competitor Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com got lots of print and e-media late this week for blasting the about-face performed by the company vis-à-vis its stand on software-free environments for CRM. Remember that name; it’ll be popping up in the latest development…

Just before the weekend, a lone pointed cry on the internet began drawing attention to some concerns Microsoft partners themselves are having with recent announcements regarding Microsoft CRM live services.

On Tuesday, perhaps abuzz with the Sam Adams beer so well-publicized from the Boston area, Microsoft Dynamics CRM general manager David Thatcher wrote a blog entry rosy in the extreme about Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In an entry entitled “Thoughts about the ‘Microsoft CRM Live’ Service” based on Thatcher’s thoughts after Steve Ballmer’s announcement of new “CRM Live” service to be launched alongside Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

“The déjà vu in this,” wrote Thatcher, “is that when we started building this product six years ago, our original goal was to build a Microsoft hosted service, not the product you know today!” (This rankled a few industry critics as more than a bit revisionist.) Giving a brief history, Thatcher continues with, “Somewhere along the way plans changed. Partly it was the ‘popping’ of the ‘dot com’ mania, but mostly it was the result of research … But, as other companies have proven, there are also plenty of customers who want their CRM as a service, and today we’re announcing that we’ll provide a Microsoft hosted service with the next release.”

Microsoft has yet to respond to competitor Benioff’s latest (and seemingly mostly justifiable) barbs, but it is interesting to note that Thatcher echoes Benioff’s remarks in his infamous response memo that list firms such as Business Objects, Adobe, Skype, Oracle and SAP as those “other companies” that made the proper move while leaving Microsoft behind.

“The coolest work we’re doing,” wrote Thatcher, actually describing the labor in that fashion, “is that we’re building a single code base that will support on-premises deployments, partner hosted deployments, and the Microsoft Live service. Our goal is to give customers ‘the power of choice,’ allowing them to choose how they want to use the software and change that over time.” Thatcher goes on to reaffirm the party line, though, when he says that “I’m sure we’ll see some customers initially choosing ‘quick and easy’ with CRM Live and later moving to an on-premises deployment with deep customization and systems integration.”

Thatcher and co. promise opportunities to mix-and-match, tailor deployment, redeploy, and multi-deploy. Multi-tenancy, promises Microsoft brass, will be re-enabled. Large-scale service deployment will be emphasized, and the current plan calls for advancing the scalability and reliability achieved in Version 3.

Thatcher goes on to parenthetically comment that “For those wondering, the next release is not just about SaaS. We’re also working on plenty of other cool” – there’s that word again – “new features, including enhanced Office integration, support for multilingual deployments, more customization options, [and] more management controls.”

Version 3 is to be released and rolled out over the last seven months around the world, with Japan and Israel coming soon. “…our focus now,” wrote Thatcher, “is the launch later this year of the first pre-releases of the next version and of the CRM Live service.” Everything sounds great with future releases and everyone over there in Boston is partying hearty and happy, right? Well…

Some sharp-eyed blog watchdog out there (go ahead, guess who) caught a dissenting voice against this song of shiny happy future, then, according to ZDNet.com, “leapt on it and circulated it late [Thursday] night to media and analyst contacts.” Said cry in the dark was that of SPIV Technologies Group sales and marketing vice president Robert E. Spivack, a guy not afraid to comment on Emperor Microsoft’s new clothes.

Spivack posted a return reply on the “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog” to Thatcher’s vision. In an entry entitled “re: Thoughts about the ‘Microsoft CRM Live’ Service,” Spivack lists some concerns and complaints regarding Microsoft that may begin to find some sympathy among other Microsoft partners.

With the amazing lead, “I find this entirely revolting,” Spivack goes on to rhetorically ask, “As a Microsoft hosting partner, we constantly are told that ‘Microsoft cares about you and really does want to help hosters,’ yet what do you do? Pre-announce a Microsoft-branded hosted CRM solution that isn’t real, while we still struggle to provide CRM hosting using the kludgy ‘hosted CRM’ update that you guys threw together half-baked?”

Whoa. Spivack goes on to comment that his firm is “still struggling just to bring up CRM in a test environment, and from reading the Microsoft Dynamics community website posts, MANY people are having trouble getting it installed.”

However, lest this writer make Spivack’s entry sound like little more than a frustrated rant, the VP does provide particulars. “The intricate interdependencies between IIS, SQL Server, Reporting Services, Active Directory, and Security,” he opines, “create an installation nightmare with octopus-like tentacles reaching into every nook and cranny of server infrastructure…” Nice imagery; perhaps Spivack should write full-time…

“Even backup/restore is not simple,” notes Spivack. “The SQL Server databases contain data fields with GUIDS that link back to AD ou’s and domains so you can’t just backup the database and move it.” In summary, Spivack says that “It seems that every attempt by Microsoft to build a ‘web services / web application’ violates every rule of simplicity [the Microsoft] MSDN / development team tells us to do.”

Spivack goes on to compare the Microsoft system to that of other .NET web service-centric applications such as Deep Matrix Live Stats, Community Server Forums, and DotNetNuke. In terms of ease of installation, well, let’s just say Microsoft doesn’t do well in Spivack’s view. “Reporting services,” he says, “is hell.” As for the multi-tenancy CRM that’s got Thatcher and the Microsofters all agog, says Spivack, “Forget multi-tenancy CRM. [T]hat’s the least important CRM feature right now when you can’t even re-use a database server for multiple installs (officially), can’t use non-default instance SQL (without some restricted special fix), can’t share report server[s]…”

ZDNet author and trends strategist Phil Wainewright particularly provided some nice coverage to Spivack, not hurt by the fact that Spivack’s comments essentially proved Wainewright corrected on a number of points he’d made in past analysis. “The whole spat,” wrote the strategist, “is symptomatic of the huge problems Microsoft faces in adjusting its existing applications, architecture and partner relationships to the realities of competing in the on-demand space. No wonder, then, that Salesforce.com leapt on it…”

In Wainewright’s opinion, recent moves by Microsoft in the CRM and SaaS arenas are “the worst possible approach Microsoft could be taking.” Wainewright offers strong words for those interested in Microsoft’s announced offerings. In response to the announcement on Tuesday, Wainewright wrote with the lead, “Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM doesn’t exist. It’s vaporware.” (This expression would in fact be used by Spivack the following day in his piece.)

Wainewright believes that Microsoft will perhaps never deliver, at least not to the extent promised in Boston and elsewhere. “This is a fud announcement” – the term “fud” is derived from “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt,” a marketing strategy – “of a plan to introduce a product this time next year (‘in the second quarter of 2007’) in the hope that it’ll persuade customers to postpone buying decisions,” the analyst declared on ZDNet online. “The ploy,” Wainewright explained, “was often used by the likes of IBM, Oracle and others back in the 1990s.”

He went on to write that, “Anyone who’s already thinking about deploying on-demand CRM can have it up and running by the fall, six months ahead of Microsoft’s availability schedule,” finely opining that the new live product figures to be “as laborious and time-consuming … as the current on-premises software.” Silicon Valley, Calif.-based SPIV Technologies Group was formed in 2000 by Spivack and other entrepreneurs coming from high technology firms such as Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard. Originally, SPIV offered services as a systems integrator / consultancy for VoIP technology, providing strategic, technical, and market consulting for Voice-over-IP design, implementation, and deployment.

Today, SPIV’s VoiceGateway.com web hosting division offers shared web hosting on Windows 2000 server clusters, supporting services including Microsoft Dot NET Web Services, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases, and SharePoint Team Services. Phil Wainewright first made a name for himself in the strategist gig back in 1998, when he established ASPnews.com, a website for the on-demand software services industry. He sold that ‘site in 2000 and formed LooselyCoupled.com, a website specializing in enterprise adoption of web services and business process automation. ZDNet is a tech news site for the business industry, and is a publication of CNET Networks.