HCL Technologies Grabs Microsoft Dynamics CRM Market Share with $46M PowerObjects Deal

HCL Technologies, has acquired Minneapolis-based Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner PowerObjects, the company announced today. HCL will pay approximately $46 million, including contingent payments subject to certain financial milestones.

PowerObjects, which has grown to over 250 employees, had trailing twelve-month revenues of approximately $37 million as of September 30, 2015. HCL had $6.1 billion in revenue in the most recent 12 month period and has over 100,000 employees across 31 countries.

HCL already has a CRM product and service portfolio among its vast array of offerings. It partners with Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle, in addition to being a Dynamics CRM gold-certified partner with a solution designed for the financial services industry. The company is also a longtime and very deeply entrenched Microsoft partner across a range of products and services.

"We are a client of Microsoft, Microsoft is a client of HCL, and we also go to market together," says Greg Palesano, executive vice president and global head of application services. He tells MSDynamicsWorld.com that HCL's visibility into Microsoft product and channel goals, in combination with their own experience seeing Dynamics CRM ascend in the enterprise CRM space, led them to conclude that a greater investment in Dynamics CRM made sense.

Palesano says HCL is seeing the top end of the CRM universe quickly segmenting itself such that only two players are seriously considered in most enterprise deals - Salesforce and Dynamics CRM. And as a close Microsoft partner, they have observed that Microsoft is making real commitments to the competitiveness of Dynamics CRM through R&D, its partner ...