Via Microsoft Monitor ... http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/002200.html
Microsoft Business Solutions saw year-over-year growth of 41 percent to $190 million. Microsoft attributed much of the growth to licensing sales of Navision and Business Contact Manager. BCM is a client-relationship management add-on to Outlook that ships with three of the six Office 2003 versions. I would consider BCM a direct competitor to ACT! and Goldmine, so over-time sales could be significant. Early BCM success could merely be tied to strong out-of-the-gate Office 2003 sales. If Microsoft can sustain sales, BCM could prove a low-end CRM replacement, the way Outlook eventually drove a large number of desktop contact managers out of the market.
Anybody else recognize this pattern?
Microsoft starts to commoditize certain application functionality (i.e. CRM), enters market at low end and BOOM, next thing you know, they own the market. If I were Seibel, SalesForce.Com, etc, I would be worried.