Microsoft aims to increase revenues from its new business division by ten times within the next five years. It is committed to taking earnings from Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) to $10 billion globally by 2008, says Ben Swartz, MD of Microsoft gold certified partner, Symetrix.
"You can rest assured Microsoft has among the best business developers, strategists and researchers behind this plan."
He says massive investment has been made in terms of human capital and in acquiring the necessary technology, client base and revenue streams to ensure success in opening up a new market to maintain and protect Microsoft`s position.
"MBS presents an enormous value proposition for business because the required functionality can be delivered in shorter timeframes at much lower costs than applications that have traditionally dominated the business market."
Swartz says although Microsoft is new to the business applications market, its MBS offering has the backing of strong competencies and technologies through Microsoft`s successive acquisition of Great Plains and Navision Damgaard.
"Microsoft has progressed from the desktop operating system through to a server operating system and the SQL database system, and obviously the next natural progression is to move into the business application space."
Microsoft is driving its MBS technology into the global small and medium enterprise (SME) market, and Swartz points out that companies falling into this grouping in the US and Europe have a similar user base to corporates in SA. However, he says the global and local SME markets need to be differentiated because they are very different.
"In the emerging local market, the core of our projects has been to provide the functionality of traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, but in the MBS framework at a massive discount to cost, which is the win-win situation Microsoft and Symetrix are setting out to achieve."
ERP systems have finally reached a level of maturation and reliability to ensure they provide real business benefit, says Swartz. "The ERP system is one of the most valuable areas in the technological arena, and MBS now puts that within the reach of middle-tier and smaller businesses." He says all reason for fear from the middle-tier market can now be eliminated.
"Axapta works. It`s tried and tested, and available at massive discounts compared with more established names."
There is a misperception about where Microsoft intends going with MBS, says Swartz, but to put things into perspective, it should be noted that MBS`s Axapta ERP application is able to support up to 2 500 concurrent users. "Locally this means that even the largest companies that have formerly used other ERP systems are interested in MBS."
Swartz enthuses that there is massive opportunity for business and service providers in the space that Microsoft has chosen to throw its weight behind. "Although Symetrix`s focus is on southern Africa, many customers are multinationals who are asking us to export what we have achieved for them locally to other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and even Europe and Asia. I believe we are the only mid-tier Microsoft partner with such an holistic Microsoft competency and offering."
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