In Formally Introducing Dynamics CRM 2011, Microsoft Continues Its Push to Lure Siebel and Salesforce Customers

After three years of development and testing, Microsoft today formally introduced Dynamics CRM 2011 in 40 markets and 41 languages. The introduction follows on Monday's formal introduction of global availability of Dynamics CRM Online.

In his keynote address announcing Dynamics CRM 2011's worldwide availability, Kirill Tatarinov, vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, said a key marketing mission is "liberating our customers from...inflexible (CRM) systems" like those produced by Oracle's Siebel and Salesforce.com. "Those solutions are hard to use, expensive to use, inflexible to use," he said.

To emphasize the strategy, Tatarinov brought onto the stage for "interviews," executives of two companies that had made the switch from other systems to Dynamics CRM 2011. Vickie Flores, vice president, information services, of Magma, said this producer of technology expansion products had used Salesforce.com nearly since its launch,

"We were Salesforce's first million dollar customer," she said. "But with Salesforce, you couldn't get data out of it. Getting data is key. This means having a 360-degree view of the customer-how did we get the customer, what is the history, how are we supporting the customer?"

Now, using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, "I can get data out of the system in one report." Magma is "rolling it out to 600 users. Our users can see their information in their native language," which is important for Magma, with offices in countries around the world. Magma are using using an add-on from Scribe Software to pull data from Dynamics CRM for use in the organization.

The second company,