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To: TEDennis who wrote (4503)	2/28/2002 10:47:54 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9677

OT:) Great Plains gave MSFT a high middle-market accounting solution and a whole bunch of resellers/integrators (and their customers). They also bought GP's most direct (but lower priced) competitor in Solomon. It would make sense to integrate CRM with some of the accounting functionality and perhaps they've done that. Perhaps their intention was to morph GP into a serious enterprise solution package by rolling in all the other pieces from elsewhere in MSFT. It seems to me that this would be a bigger problem for the bigger enterprise software players (with more expensive solutions) than the small ones as it enables MSFT to go up-market more so than down. Besides, I doubt most buyers of Mid-priced CRM solutions are looking to replace their other systems at the same time and even those who are might be looking at less expensive accounting than GP. This does raise the question of what ever happened to the Sage alliance, though. Sage owns Acuity (sp?), MAS90 and Peachtree (and others, too, I think) on the accounting side, and I see they now own ACT! and SalesLogix in the CRM space. So, where does that leave us? Without a date for the ball? Bob PS: I don't want this to be completely OT, so here's a mongo grub - Message 17126713

To: TEDennis who wrote (4503)	3/1/2002 11:13:25 AM
From: Bob Trocchi	Respond to of 9677

TED... <<What are your thoughts>> Well, to be frank with you I do not have any really insightful thoughts on this one. Bob B. answered posted some relevant comments. It seems to me that anytime MSFT announces a product that competes in a specific area (MONEY for example) competitors and investors quake in their boots. Then as time goes on, reality sets in and people find out that MSFT is great only when they stick to their own knitting. This for the most part products that are not business/application specific. Yea, I know that OFFICE is a set of applications but it is generic and applicable to all industries, not targeted to a specific industry or business application. In those areas, MSFT enjoys the great benefit of putting out a product that usually is not great but by golly they are persistent. (Who couldn't be with there bankroll) Eventually they win. Now in this case, GP had (has?) a good reputation. MSFT did not develop the products. So, maybe GP evolving into CRM might just result in a very good product. One could also speculate that CRM is also not tied to a specific industry thus fits the MSFT style. TED, you can evaluate GP's products, I cannot. GP has a lot of distributors and I believe a good customer base which I believe would be their first area of success. After that who knows? Guess I have written way too much. cheers bob T.