Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace (Gartner Research, Oct. 22, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in its Social Software in the Workplace Magic Quadrant. This Magic Quadrant evaluates social software products used primarily by internal employees and brings into sharp contrast the strategies and choices pursued by established large vendors and smaller specialist ones.

IDC Flash: SharePoint 2010: Re-thinking Information Work (IDC, Oct. 21, 2009) IDC analysts provide a summary of SharePoint 2010 news announced at the 2009 SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas.

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management (Gartner Research, Oct. 15, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in its Enterprise Content Management Magic Quadrant. This Magic Quadrant assessment takes into account vendors' current product offerings and overall strategies, as well as their planned initiatives and product road maps.

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers (Gartner Research, September 24, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in its Enterprise Application Servers Magic Quadrant. “Leaders in the EAS market combine insightful understanding of the realities of the market, the ability to influence the market's direction, the ability to attract a following and the capacity to lead. Leaders have the proven ability to deliver on their vision and to support their customers through periods of stability, as well as periods of change or economic hardships. The leaders control most of the market's business activity and are the primary influencers of market evolution.”

Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals (Gartner Research, Sept. 17, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders’ Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals. This report analyzes vendors with offerings in the horizontal portals space. Microsoft takes Gartner’s findings as further indication that the company is delivering on its commitment to provide a full, competitive and comprehensive portal solution.

Gartner Evaluates Microsoft's BPM Strategy and Partner BPMS Products (Gartner Research, September 14, 2009) Gartner evaluates Microsoft's business process management strategy and the strengths and challenges of its BPM suite partners in the context of our Four Corners BPM Framework, BPM Usage Scenarios and Five BPMS Technology Evolutionary Paths.

Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology (Gartner Research, Inc., Sept. 2, 2009) Microsoft is positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner, Inc.'s 2009 Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology. This Magic Quadrant assesses vendors with capabilities that go beyond enterprise search to encompass a range of technologies. Their capabilities include: search; federated search, content analytics, such as content classification, categorization and clustering, fact and entity extraction, taxonomy creation and management, information presentation (for example, visualization) to support analysis and understanding; and desktop search to address user-controlled repositories to locate and "invoke" documents, data and e-mail.

Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications (Gartner, Sept. 1, 2009) Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications, 2009, Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant. Gartner analysts evaluate UC product providers based on the quality, efficacy and overall maturity of the products, systems, tools and procedures that enhance individual, group and enterprise communications.

Forrester Report: Tier Your Workforce To Save Money With Cloud-Based Corporate Email; Forrester Finds Customers Can Save “$1.3 Million Annually With Exchange Online Deskless Worker” (Forrester, Aug. 13, 2009, .pdf file, 423 kb) Information and knowledge management (I&KM) pros are used to giving all employees the same software tools. While this has the benefit of simplicity, it often means buying licenses for software that is seldom or never used. With cloud-based email, firms now have a way to tune their email costs to the actual needs of their workforce. The easiest way to get started is to host some mailboxes on-premises and others in the cloud. While firms with fewer than 15,000 employees can almost always save money by moving all mailboxes to the cloud, every firm can save money by moving their occasional users — workers that can get away with a Web-based email client — to a cloud-based email provider. How much money? For these occasional users, as much as $63 per user per year.

The Forrester Wave: Collaboration Platforms, Q3 2009 (Forrester, August 6, 2009, .pdf file, 442 kb) This Forrester Wave evaluates 11 collaboration platform vendors and names Microsoft a “leader.” Forrester reports that “while the primary initial use case for SharePoint is often document workspace functionality, the suite approach generally leads to broader adoption of functionality including search, portal, an application development platform, business intelligence in the form of PerformancePoint Services, and basic content management.”

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony (Gartner, August 5, 2009) In this report, Gartner positions Microsoft in the Visionary Quadrant and says “The market for telephony will continue to be turbulent. The future direction for the players will vary.”

Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management (Gartner Research, Inc., Aug. 5, 2009) Organizations see Web content management as a pivotal solution component in driving new business value. Use this Magic Quadrant to understand the fresh vitality in the WCM market and how Gartner rates the leading vendors and their packaged products. Gartner’s assessment takes into account the vendors' current product offerings and overall strategies, as well as their future initiatives and product road maps. Gartner also factors in how well vendors are driving market changes, or at least adapting to changing market requirements.

Gartner Vendor Rating: Microsoft (Gartner Research, Inc., Aug. 3, 2009) Gartner's 2009 vendor rating for Microsoft evaluates its overall strategy and all its enterprise offerings. Overall rating: positive.

ROI Case Study Microsoft Dynamics CRM ISS Worldwide (Nucleus Research, Aug. 2009, .pdf file, 152 kb) ISS Worldwide deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM to streamline its CRM operations, increasing customer retention and cross selling while improving collections.

Microsoft Revamps Its Partner Community. Will Customers Feel the Heat? (AMR Research, Aug. 2009, .pdf file, 128 kb) At its Worldwide Partner Conference in a hot and humid New Orleans, Microsoft announced a strategic-level realignment to its partner models, which includes partners and independent software vendors selling and servicing its Dynamics products. The company’s goal is to drive consistently high customer experience standards, with the might of its extensive channel marketing spending focused on business growth and customer service.

Microsoft Stacks Up its Web Platform Technologies (Gartner Research, July 29, 2009) This report evaluates Microsoft’s Web Platform Technologies.

Microsoft Goes for the Gold with the Release of Silverlight 3.0 (Gartner Research, July 29, 2009) This report evaluates the release of Microsoft’s Silverlight 3.0.

Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation (Gartner Research, Inc., July 22, 2009) With shrinking sales resources and market opportunities, investing in technology to automate critical sales processes may be the only alternative to still meet sales targets. The economy has affected vendors in different ways; some vendors on our 2008 SFA Magic Quadrant continued to see double-digit growth, while others dropped out of the market completely.

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Database Management Systems, Q2 2009 (Forrester, June 30, 2009, .pdf file, 327 kb) This Forrester Wave assesses more than a dozen firms based primarily on their enterprise open source and closed source database management systems. Forrester named Microsoft a ‘leader’ in the DBMS Wave and states that Microsoft is “The most aggressive DBMS vendor with a strong road map.” In this Wave, Forrester categorizes Leaders as offering “broad set of functionality to support any critical transactional application.”

Case Study: Pfizer Takes a Two-Pronged Approach to Content Management (Gartner Research, Inc., June 29, 2009) This Case Study details how Pfizer standardized on a basic content services (BCS) offering for work in progress along with a robust enterprise content management (ECM) platform that addresses Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-mandated content applications. CIOs, business and IT leaders, and application managers executives should read this study to see how Pfizer dealt with governance issues, migration from legacy systems and the costs of maintaining two solutions.

Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies (Gartner, June 4, 2009) Microsoft Dynamics AX Positioned as a Leader in Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP Magic Quadrant. Despite mergers and acquisitions, there are many ERP offerings for midmarket companies and firms deploying Tier 2 ERP systems. This Magic Quadrant evaluates products that have a global presence and are specifically tailored for product-centric midmarket companies with roughly 100 to 1,000 employees.

Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management (Gartner Research, June 2, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders’ quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management. The Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) market remains active in an adverse global economy. This year's Magic Quadrant acknowledges emerging IT planning and control and application lifecycle management integration support, two (but not the only) routes for expanding PPM systems.

The Case for Enterprise Applications in a Recession (Ovum, May 28, 2009, .pdf file, 136 kb) The current recession surprised nearly everyone with its size and suddenness. Few foresaw the carnage it would wreak on Wall Street or it’s flash-freeze effect on credit markets. As revenues sank, many companies responded by aggressively cutting staff and budgets, including those for IT. An understandable response, but not necessarily a smart one.

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wireless E-Mail Software Market (Gartner Research, May 27, 2009) In this Magic Quadrant, Gartner determines that “the market for enterprise wireless e-mail products is mature, with most new demand coming from the expansion of the user base in companies that already deployed the technology. Despite shrinking IT budgets in 2009, wireless e-mail continues to be a priority for mobile investments.”

Gartner MarketScope for E-mail Systems (Gartner, May 15, 2009) In this report, Gartner finds that “demand for e‐mail services is strong and overall message volumes continue to climb, to the point where users are struggling with overload issues, and legal and compliance issues are of paramount importance. “

Microsoft’s Web Platform Expands To PHP (Forrester, Inc., May 12, 2009, .pdf file 214kb) In this report, Forrester notes that the new Microsoft Web Platform will offer simplified install of certain popular PHP Web applications such as Acquia Drupal, Gallery, and SilverStripe CMS as well as popular ASP.NET Web applications such as dasBlog, DotNetNuke, and ScrewTurn Wiki. Forrester points out that Microsoft has also announced that the Web Application Gallery will allow developers to offer free versions of these applications directly to IT development shops. Forrester writes, “Microsoft’s contribution to the open source software (OSS) community is to support PHP apps and make them easy to install — on Windows servers. The result: Open source software has another direct channel into the enterprise, which means that it’s now easier for enterprises to find and install an OSS alternative to expensive commercial application platforms that run on Windows and Internet Information Services (IIS).”

Convergence New Orleans Underlines Microsoft Focus on ERP and CRM, but No Major Products Were Unveiled (Gartner, Inc. May 2009) This recent report from Gartner covers the Microsoft Convergence 2009 event.

The Forrester Wave™: Mobile Device Management Solutions, Q2 2009 (Forrester Research, April 27, 2009, .pdf file, 331 kb) Microsoft’s extensive efforts at streamlining and simplifying mobile device management have paid off. Within the report, System Center Mobile Device Manager is mentioned as a “Contender” and Forrester notes “IT operations professionals who demand granular control, such as Active Directory enrollment and Group Policy, device-specific policies, management via IPsec tunneling, or full software inventory of their Windows Mobile 6.1 devices and up, SCMDM is a must-have solution for you.”

Microsoft Moves Dynamics Forward With New Releases And Simplified Pricing Strategies (Forrester Research, Inc. April 17, 2009, .pdf file 279kb) About 7,000 customers, partners, Microsoft staff, and industry observers made the pilgrimage to New Orleans to hear the latest and greatest from the Microsoft Dynamics team. Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, gave the keynote outlining how businesses could become more dynamic, why now is the time to seize the moment, and how enterprises could adapt to the change in front of them. Overall, conference goers were upbeat, optimistic, and energetic. One explanation for this sense of "can-do" attitude among attendees is based on how Microsoft has made the transformation into a value and innovation alternative to the large ERP vendors moving into the small and medium-sized business (SMB) space. Forrester believes that strong attendance despite the down market indicates a healthy business and one that Microsoft seeks to reinforce its value proposition as it tries to bring more customers into its maintenance offerings.

Workflow Supplement Scenarios for Microsoft SharePoint (Gartner Research, April 16, 2009) In this report Gartner discusses “several scenarios for better coordination of the interactions between people, process and content.”

Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers (Gartner, Inc. April 3, 2009) As a result of the economic slowdown, business leaders are focusing on the central role of customer service to simultaneously lower costs and build customer loyalty. Because the contact center is a key touchpoint for customers at the same time that it includes the Web site, some rethinking and re-engineering are required. The combination of three factors — business slowdown, the need to include Web site interactions and the need to lower customer service costs — is shaping business leaders' decisions. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of this Magic Quadrant.

"X" marks many spots in xRM (Ovum Research, April 2009) In the high-tech industry, one of the most fertile fields of innovation is TLAs - three-letter acronyms that describe some hot new category of software. Most are so obscure that they are meaningless unless presented in context. One that may prove to have staying power, at least if Microsoft has its way, is xRM - a category of “relationship management” applications in which “x” isn't fixed but a variable that stands for “anything.”

Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets (Gartner Research, March 31, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Challengers Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets. SOA governance is about ensuring and validating that assets and artifacts within the architecture are operating as expected and maintaining a certain level of quality. Now in its second year, this Magic Quadrant reduces the market to one set of technologies with strong architectural cohesion (integration), promoting ease of use and the interoperability of products.

Case Study: Microsoft Speeds Tool Delivery With Agile Development (Forrester, Inc., March 27, 2009 .pdf file, 242 kb) This case study looks at the agile development practices of Microsoft’s TeamArch and its involvement with Visual Studio Team System 2010. TeamArch decided to begin using Agile development practices to better connect with its customer, improve the planning process, and increase predictability and quality. Forrester states that “TeamArch decided to begin using agile development practices to better connect with its customer, improve the planning process, and increase predictability and quality.” Additionally, Forrester states that “Microsoft’s TeamArch incrementally evolves a release, adding and refining rather than deleting features.”

Magic Quadrant for Software Change and Configuration Management for Distributed Platforms, 2009 (Gartner, Inc., March 26, 2009) This vendor evaluation looks at the Software Change and Configuration Management market and the tools that support assignments, monitoring, execution and reporting of changes to software products for teams and for groups of teams. Gartner states that “SCCM tools are evolving on a path toward integrating tightly with or becoming generalized management platforms for requirements, test plans and other aspects of the application life cycle.” Additionally, Gartner writes that during the next three to five years, most high-performance development organizations will add aspects of ALM to their SCCM solutions

In Down Economy, Microsoft Is Up on Innovation (IDC, Inc - March 25, 2009) Despite the economic downturn, Microsoft has reaffirmed its long-term value as the source of technology innovation that its enterprise applications customers can depend on for years to come. Before a crowd of nearly 7,000 Microsoft Dynamics customers and resellers attending the recent Convergence conference, Microsoft unveiled a slew of new products including some that were still in prototypes as well as others that would be instrumental in restoring growth to the enterprise applications market.

Case Study: Pfizer Takes a Two-Pronged Approach to Content Management (Gartner Research, March 13, 2009) In this case study, Pfizer, a global pharmaceutical company, adopted a two-prong strategy to solve its content management requirements. Pfizer's two-pronged approach is a prime example of how many Gartner clients are addressing the varying content types they must manage and providing users with appropriate tools for the tasks.

Windows 7 Won't Need SP1, but Will Still Need 12 to 18 Months Before Deployment Begins (Gartner Research, March 12, 2009) Gartner evaluates Windows 7 SP1 in this report.

Getting Off Windows XP Is More Important Than Windows Vista vs. Windows 7 (Gartner Research, March 12, 2009) Gartner evaluates enterprise OS migration plans.

Case Study: University of Kentucky Uses Unified Communications to Enhance Communication and Cut Costs (Gartner Research, March 11, 2009) The University of Kentucky evaluated Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 as a means to offer UC and manage growth of the university's large telephony infrastructure. IT personnel discovered that OCS 2007 could also reduce IT costs and enhance the way people communicate.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 (Butler Group, March 2009, .pdf file, 207 kb). In this report, Butler Group reviews Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 calling it a complete ALM offering. As outlined in the report, strengths of VSTS 2010 include improved software quality management features, simplified testing in virtualized environments with lab managem ent and TFS version control that enables code branch visualization and branching. The report states “Butler Group believes that Visual Studio 2010 is an essential product for high-productivity development on the Microsoft platform: it is unlikely that enterprise .NET developers will want any other IDE, and project managers, software architects, and other team members will find excellent new functionality and ALM support with this release.”

Microsoft Plan Establishes Likely Path to Generalist Search Strength (Gartner, February 18, 2009) This Gartner First Take by Whit Andrews evaluates Microsoft’s recent announcement on updated strategy for enterprise search products. Additionally, the report states, “Other vendors emphasize specific applications, and this announcement will push them to redouble their efforts either in that direction or in other directions, such as alternative delivery models.”

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Warehousing Platforms, Q1 2009 (Forrester, February 6, 2009, .pdf file 556 kb) This Wave assesses more than a dozen firms based primarily on their enterprise data warehousing (EDW) platforms. Forrester named Microsoft a ‘leader’ in the EDW Wave and states that “Microsoft challenges the EDW market leaders with its aggressive scalability push.” Forrester categorizes Leaders as offering “mature, high-performance, scalable, flexible, secure, and robust EDW solutions that combine an analytics-optimized database with query optimization, fast loading, and mixed-workload management tools.”

Green Software: The Partner Opportunity (Ovum, January 28, 2009, pdf. 140kb) Enterprise applications vendors have a significant opportunity to help customers cut operating costs and become "greener" by reducing the amount of energy consumed in manufacturing, building operations, transportation and other business functions. But the opportunity is not limited to the vendors alone. Given their strong and growing reliance on channel partners, there is a corollary opportunity for the VARs, ISVs, SIs, consultants and others that sell and implement the vendors’ applications. This opportunity is largely unclaimed--and makes good business sense even in difficult economic times.

Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2009 (Gartner, January 16, 2009) Gartner positions Microsoft in Leaders Quadrant in the 2009 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms.

MarketScope for Ajax Technology and RIA Platforms (Gartner, Inc., December 29, 2008) This MarketScoope addresses “the needs of Gartner customers in evaluating product offerings and vendor relationships in an early to midstage market.” Gartner writes that “despite having appeared as early as 1999, Ajax technologies and rich Internet application platforms are still in a dynamic and early adopter phase of market evolution, with respect to enterprise-level adoption.” Microsoft has been ranked as ‘Positive’ in the MarketScope.

European Software Configuration Management Tool Adoption Trends (Forrester, December 23, 2008, .pdf file, 454 kb). This report highlights an increase in awareness and adoption of application life-cycle management (ALM) processes and tools. Forrester writes that “when it comes to SCM and software change and configuration management (SCCM), European application development leaders frequently adopt tools from Microsoft” and other companies and open source solutions.” According to Forrester, Microsoft Team Foundation Server has integrated change management, process enforcement, and metrics-gathering capabilities that make it one of the most capable SCCM tools available.

Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2008 (Gartner, Inc., December 23, 2008) This Magic Quadrant depicts Gartner's analysis of how data warehouse DBMS software-only vendors measure against specific criteria within the marketplace. Gartner states that “The data warehouse DBMS market has evolved from a traditional information store supporting business intelligence (BI) users and tools into an analytics infrastructure repository for the enterprise. And organizations are adding additional workload from online transaction processing (OLTP) applications and increasing the frequency of data loading to intraday, approaching continuous loading.”

Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for New Systematic SOA Application Projects (Gartner Research, December 19, 2008) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for New Systematic SOA Application Projects. Gartner states that the “New development of service-oriented business applications requires a complex collection of capabilities in runtime-enabling technologies and development tools and examines the ability of leading application infrastructure vendors to provide complete end-to-end support for such projects.”

Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for SOA Composite Application Projects (Gartner Research, December 19, 2008) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for SOA Composite Application Projects. This report aims at helping organizations select comprehensive end-to-end application infrastructure to support composite application projects in the context of SOA and other initiatives.

Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects (Gartner Research, December 19, 2008) Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects. Gartner states that “Back-end application integration technology providers continue to consolidate as users expand and increase the complexity and sophistication of their service-oriented-architecture driven and software-as-a-service-driven integration requirements.”

MarketScope for Application Life Cycle Management (Gartner, Inc., December 17, 2008) This MarketScope assesses the market offerings and their providers. Gartner states that “Efficient coordination and automation of the delivery process requires new collaborative approaches to the planning, measurement, control and reporting of activities. These new approaches are what differentiate current application life cycle management (ALM) tools, and what make ALM processes vital to leading-edge development activities.”

Microsoft Dynamics Evolves Role-Based and Vertical Approaches (IDC, December 2008, .pdf file, 85 kb) In the midst of financial crisis and a gloomy economic outlook, Microsoft gathered 4,000 customers, partners, and employees from Europe, Middle East, and Africa in Copenhagen to talk about business applications and its vision of the "Dynamic Business." Dynamics businesses are leveraging three key resources for competitive advantage: people, processes, and ecosystems. The big announcement at the conference was the launch of Dynamics NAV 2009 with "RoleTailored" user interface with 21 preconfigured roles.

The Forrester Wave™: Order Management Hubs, Q4 2008 (Forrester, November 14, 2008, .pdf file 792 kb) Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 makes one of the most significant gains as a Strong Performer in this edition of the Forrester Wave evaluation of order management hubs. In fact, the solution just missed the Leader band by a fraction…Overall product strategy represents a compelling vision for end-to-end order management. As companies in the upper midmarket continue to experience difficulty with existing systems, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 will play an increasing role as a key alternative for divisions and subsidiaries looking for a lower-cost and more effective alternative. The solution fared in the top half of vendors evaluated for corporate and go-to-market strategy due to strong customer references and global reach. Forrester recommends the Microsoft solution to companies with existing Microsoft tools and technologies and for larger SMBs up to $5 billion in revenues looking for a user-centric solution. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 shows good traction with companies in discrete and process manufacturing, distribution, retail, and professional services.

ISO Standard 'Office' Formats Overpromise Compatibility (Gartner Research, November 5, 2008, .pdf file, 167 kb) Distinguished Analyst, Michael Silver, states “that OOXML, because of its better compatibility with the legacy format, would have been a better choice than ODF as the single standard.” Silver noted that “The International Standardization Organization Office format battle is over” and recommends: “Select tools based on the needs of users and organizations (including business partners and customers) first, and document formats supported second.”

The Forrester Wave: Customer Service Software Solutions, Q4 2008 (Forrester Research Inc., October 21, 2008, pdf file, 1 mb) Microsoft Dynamics CRM shines by offering its infrastructure to enterprise organizations. Microsoft’s strategy for growth is to offer buyers a choice of both on-premise and SaaS service deployment, a flexible user interface, a choice of payment options, and a strong partner community. Buyer interest in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is high in the SMB market and is growing in the enterprise segment.

Client Virtualization Promises to Speed App Delivery: A TÜV NORD Group Case Study (Forrester Research, October 7, 2008, .pdf file, 106 kb) This case study by Natalie Lambert examines the steps TÜV Nord Group took to meet the application demands of its large mobile population and a large-scale migration to Windows Vista. The solution was a combination of local application virtualization and management tools, which the company found easily met its office and mobile workers’ needs, as well as saved time and money for IT. As Natalie Lambert states in the study, “For TÜV NORD, the quantifiable benefits of application virtualization have been significant. Most importantly, it has found that its desktop operations staff spends less time deploying software to machines and supporting installed applications.”

A New ERP For The 21st Century (Forrester, October 3, 2008, .pdf 302 kb) Enterprise applications vendors successfully address users’ operations objectives in the pursuit of efficiency improvement. But companies’ executive and senior managers are focused on business transformation, which is not supported by today’s operations-oriented enterprise applications. This unmet need will give rise to a new class of vendor or an established vendor that can learn new tricks, i.e., that can structure solutions that support executive action-taking and not just information sharing.

The Forrester Wave™: Sales Force Management, Q4 2008 (Forrester Research, October 3, 2008 .pdf file, 884 kb) Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a Leader in SFA. Sales analysis tools, opportunity management, and setup and configuration capabilities are the application's key sales strengths, as well as internationalization, usability, and versatile deployment capabilities. An added bonus is that the solution deploys quickly, giving buyers a fast time-to-value. Its low license and subscription costs make it an attractive sales application for enterprise and midmarket firms that are highly cost- sensitive.

Microsoft’s Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 - Still Making Progress in the Market? (Gartner, October 1, 2008) Gartner evaluates System Center Operations Manager 2007. A new Gartner Report titled “Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager 2007 – Still Making Progress in the Market?” authored by David Williams (http://www.gartner.com/) evaluates System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Ops Mgr). This third‐party view offers recommendations for current and prospective customers looking for information on the adoption and success rate of SCOM 2007.

“Microsoft Unleashes India's Creative Capitalism” (Forrester Research, Inc., October 2008, .pdf file, 188 kb) “Microsoft’s 17-month-old Unlimited Potential (UP) program brings together the company’s business strategy and corporate citizenship goals in a coordinated effort. UP’s goal? To help address the diverse social and economic issues faced by 5 billion people in the world who currently receive little or no benefit from technology. In India, for instance, UP works closely with grassroots innovators to co-develop and co-market tech solutions that enhance local communities’ standard of living. UP’s success proves that tech vendors can do well while doing good in the world. Following Microsoft’s lead, tech multinationals should integrate their for-profit business models and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives into a coherent strategy to profitably serve users at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”

SQL Server 2008 Ups Pressure On Competitors; Microsoft Boosts Manageability, BI, Performance, Productivity, and Security (Forrester Research, Sept. 22, 2008, .pdf file, 115 kb) For the majority of mission-critical applications today, SQL Server 2008 already has the strongest combination of price/performance, manageability, security, and DBA productivity. The latest version of SQL Server from Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers hundreds of new DBMS features that boost the productivity of database administrators (DBAs) and developers, improve support for larger databases, and enhance security.

Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications (Gartner Research, September 12, 2008) This vendor evaluation by Bern Elliot examines enterprise unified communications as it relates to productivity, collaboration and business process improvement. Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders’ quadrant. According to Gartner, “The Leaders quadrant contains vendors selling comprehensive and integrated UC solutions that directly or, with well-defined partnerships, address the full range of market needs.”

The Forrester Wave: Enterprise CRM Suites, Q3 2008 (Forrester, Inc., August 29, 2008, Pdf 585k) Microsoft Dynamics CRM shines by offering flexibility to enterprise buyers. Microsoft is trying to exploit its desktop applications strength in large enterprises and promote its now-more robust business applications to this sector. Its strategy for growth is to offer buyers a choice of both on-premise and SaaS service deployment, a flexible user interface, a choice of payment options, and a strong partner community. Buyer interest in Microsoft solutions is high in the SMB market and is growing in the enterprise segment ... Buyers have a full range of deployment options: on-premise, SaaS, on-premise hosted, or hybrid. The solution’s code is the same regardless of deployment choice, so migration from one deployment type to another is relatively easy ... Buyers also like Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s usability, lower price, and its quick time-to-value compared with traditional CRM applications.

The Forrester Wave™: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q3 2008 (Forrester Research, Inc. August 26, 2008, .pdf file 554kb) Over the past five years, Microsoft has established itself as a major CRM player thanks to deep capital investment, a formidable strategy, and strong branding. The product is strong in SFA, internationalization, and usability. Arguably its greatest strength is its native Microsoft Office user experience. The solution is set up to look, feel, and function like Outlook. Sales analysis tools, opportunity management, and setup and configuration capabilities are the application’s key SFA strengths. The product also is available in multiple deployment options and is attractively priced below many of the alternative products in the market. The solution is built on the Microsoft .NET framework and integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft productivity tools, like Office, Outlook, and SharePoint.

Globalization Comes Home: What It Means to Small and Midsize Businesses (AMR Research, August 23, 2008, .pdf file, 153 kb) Building geographically diverse supply chains that account for high fuel costs has become top priority for global leaders, especially in organizations where logistics costs cut into a large percentage of revenue and meeting customer service levels is critical. While we would expect companies to look first at tactical initiatives like managing inventory tradeoffs versus fuel costs and improving transportation efficiency, they’re taking a backseat to the more strategic focus of having the right network design. Along with this supply network emphasis, the right skills and talent are required at the local level, along with supporting tools and technologies.

Awakening a Sleeping Giant: Inside Microsoft Business Solutions ’ERP Strategy (AMR Research, August 2008, .pdf file, 331 kb) Microsoft Business Solutions is ready to strike: The midmarket is ripe for ERP, and the company’s four ERP products — AX, NAV, GP, and SL — have stable, long-term roadmaps as well as alignment with Microsoft’s People Ready positioning. Microsoft Business Solutions and its partners have a tremendous opportunity to exert a unique leadership position in the midmarket through delivering not only business applications, but also the surrounding infrastructure, all of which is backed by Microsoft’s brand reputation of ease of use, strong R&D dollars, and executive leadership.

Virtualization Price War: VMware’s Little Big Horn? (Yankee Group, July 2008, .pdf file, 1.8 mb) This report discusses the emergence of vendors (specifically Microsoft, Citrix and Oracle) competing with VMware on price. Microsoft is portrayed as working to close the gap on VMware’s performance & functionality edge.

What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, Open XML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications (Burton, June 18, 2008) Industry debate about the relative merits of OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML) highlights the significance of the productivity application market shift from binary and proprietary file formats to vendor- and product-independent Extensible Markup Language (XML) models. The competitive stakes are huge, and the related political posturing is sometimes perplexing. In this overview (updated after OOXML’s approval by ISO [International Organization for Standardization]), Research Directors Guy Creese and Peter O’Kelly introduce ODF, OOXML, and related World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, and project their implications for future productivity applications.

Choosing an ISV Partner Program (Forrester, June 18, 2008, .pdf file, 473 kb) This independent report describes Microsoft’s ISV program as “very friendly to small players.” Forrester analyst, Merv Adrian, also says Microsoft’s program “is the largest program, from the largest vendor, with the most at stake — 95% of Microsoft’s revenue comes from partners. Microsoft manages its program closely: In addition to fees, ISVs must earn “partner points” with customer references, solution certifications, employee certifications, and customer satisfaction scores to keep or raise their status. The connection to Microsoft logos and its enormous, well-integrated, and well-promoted Web presence is also a big plus.”

Six Reasons Why Microsoft’s Hyper-V Will Overtake VMware (Clabby Analytics, May 2008, .pdf file, 464 kb) Analyst Joe Clabby defines the server virtualization technology and presents a six-point argument for why Microsoft can overtake VMware in this space within the next five years. Specifically, Joe asserts that Microsoft has an advantage with price, packaging, depth, reach, control/integration and install base.

Microsoft Announces System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (Enterprise Management Associates, May 2008, .pdf file, 204 kb) This report provides a favorable overview of the details of Microsoft’s announcements relative to cross platform management of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, as well as heterogeneous support in System Center Operations Manager.

Microsoft Management & Virtualisation Strategy Continues to Mature (IDC, May 2008, .pdf file, 94 kb) This report reviews Microsoft’s cross-platform server virtualization management announcements made at Microsoft Management Summit and focuses on their impact on the Australian and New Zealand marketplaces.

Microsoft Plans to Manage Next Generation Data Centers (Enterprise Strategy Group, May 2008, .pdf file, 124 kb) ESG analysts Mark Bowker and Mary Turner predict that Microsoft’s move toward heterogeneous management, combined with its long-term vision for the next-generation data center, will create “fireworks” in the management vendor market over the next few years.

Microsoft Shows New Attitude at MIX08, but Consistency Will Be Key (Gartner Research, April 17, 2008) This report looks at the major announcements made at Microsoft's MIX08 conference.  David Mitchell Smith, Ray Valdes and Brian Prentice state that “Web designers will no longer just be creating innovative consumer-facing Web sites. They’re going to be leading the redesign of the computing experience in the enterprise.”

Forrester Data Chart - Microsoft Office -The Current And Very Likely Future King Of Desktop Productivity  (Forrester Research, April 2, 2008, ppt file, 359 kb) This PowerPoint deck presents data charts originally published in Forrester’s independent analyst report, “March 2008 North American and Western European Enterprise Microsoft Office 2007 Adoption Online Survey”.  Based on a survey of 259 IT decision-makers at enterprises in North America and European enterprises, Forrester found that most enterprises (83%) believe Microsoft to be the innovation leader in desktop productivity.

Forrester Data Chart - The State Of Microsoft Office 2007 Desktop Adoption (Forrester Research, March 31, 2008, pptx file, 166 kb)  This PowerPoint deck presents data charts originally published in Forrester’s independent analyst report, “March 2008 North American and Western European Enterprise Microsoft Office 2007 Adoption Online Survey”.  Based on a survey of 259 IT decision-makers at enterprises in North America and European enterprises, Forrester found that more than 40% of enterprises have Office 2007 desktop applications in use and that most will deploy Office 2007 desktop applications within the next 12 months.

Microsoft and EDS Go After the Contact Center, Together (AMR Research, March 21, 2008 .pdf file, 189 kb) The partnership between Microsoft and EDS opens up client acquisition opportunities for both vendors in the burgeoning customer management and business process outsourcing market. In an extension to the strategic relationship the two companies have had in place for some time, EDS has now also become a Dynamics CRM partner and will focus specifically on providing consulting and services for application areas, such as contact centers and sales force automation.

Convergence 2008: Microsoft Is Serious About Business Applications (AMR Research., March 15, 2008, .pdf file, 163 kb) highlights “Microsoft’s commitments to the business applications market and moving forward with all four ERP products, as well as a long-term commitment to software plus services. It also showed a company with a vision: supporting a diverse set of customer shapes and sizes with a blend of hosted services and on-premise software.”

IDE Usage Trends (Forrester Research, February 12, 2008, .pdf file, 556 kb) Forrester surveyed 703 application development professionals who subscribe to 1105 Media’s .NET or Java newsletters and are actively involved in .NET or Java development to understand their integrated development environment (IDE) usage patterns and attitudes toward open source. As expected, Microsoft Visual Studio is the primary IDE of choice in the .NET group. In fact, at 97%, it’s nearly a clean sweep. Open source alternatives to Visual Studio .NET are still immature, and express editions of Visual Studio are available for free; there won’t be any change in the monoculture of .NET development any time soon

The Buzz about BizTalk: from toy to deploy? (IBRS, February 2008, .doc file, 333 kb) In this IBRS report, Joseph Sweeney explores the evolution of BizTalk, concluding that “organisations moving towards Microsoft for development projects can now consider BizTalk R2 as a viable alternative to the more established middleware products.”

Microsoft Pushes Virtualization Frontier (Enterprise Management Associates, February 2008, .pdf file, 182 kb) This impact brief covers recent announcements by Microsoft around its virtualization strategy. In particular, this paper discusses the acquisition of Calista Technology and a recently-announced expanded partnership with Citrix. This paper includes a brief introduction to current virtualization challenges and concludes with Enterprise Management Associates’ (EMA’s) favorable perspective on the announcements and Microsoft’s strategic virtualization vision.

Getting Virtualized – Microsoft Charts the Way to Dynamic IT (Pund-IT, January 23, 2008, .pdf file, 114 kb) This write-up in Pund-IT’s weekly review concludes that while news made at Microsoft’s Virtualization Deployment Summit has the potential to have “remarkable” impact on the virtualization market, there are questions if the company’s strategic efforts will actually take root.

Microsoft Will Turn Up the Server Virtualization Volume in 2008 (Enterprise Strategy Group, January 2008, .pdf file, 132 kb) ESG analysts provide a favorable overview of Microsoft’s virtualization strategy and consider Microsoft to be a viable virtualization vendor, referencing findings from their end user surveys to support their points