Office 2007 There's more than one way to make Micr

Microsoft;s Software+Services (S+S) strategy arrives in quite a few guises. At its Convergence 2008 conference in Orlando this week for its business-applications consumers and partners, Microsoft highlighted but an additional one of its S+S forms: Third-party company extensions to its on-premise software.Microsoft;s business applications consist of four several ERP suites, plus its Dynamics CRM providing. Microsoft has produced noises about delivering versions of its Axapta, Remarkable Plains, Solomon and Navision ERP goods that can be multi-tenant and Microsoft-hosted (with no firm due dates so far). And Dynamics CRM 4.0, the newest version of Microsoft;s CRM item, could be deployed by clients in on-premise, partner-hosted and/or Microsoft-hosted configurations.(Microsoft reconfirmed this week that its Dynamics CRM Reside four.0 release will be “broadly accessible” in the spring of 2008. Not sure if that is Microspeak for moving from beta to final,Office 2007, or just talking about a broader beta….)At the Convergence conference on March 12, Microsoft announced that it also would make available paid support extensions to its on-premise Microsoft ERP and CRM items. (I haven;t seen prices for these published anywhere but. I have a question in to Microsoft about pricing.) The services unveiled today: Payment service: Fraud prevention technology from PayPal and Chase Paymentech Solutions, for those using credit cards.Marketplace company: Integration with eBay allows clients to sell their products on eBay as well as through their own Web stores and offline channels.Keyword marketing service: Campaign tracking and management for search engine marketing (via Microsoft;s adCenter, I am assuming). This isn;t the first time Microsoft has unveiled company extensions to its software program. Last year, the enterprise rolled out several third-party solutions (including credit-card processing, marketplace companies and payroll providers) to its Office Accounting Express 2007 item.And earlier this year, Microsoft announced it would follow a similar strategy for its Office Live Little Organization company. (So, in this case, we;re talking services extensions to a services, rather than software program.)Paid extensions to Microsoft;s recently consolidated SKU of Office Live Small Enterprise include Store Manager, a hosted e-commerce offering from Microsoft for $39.95 per month, that will help consumers sell items on their own site, as well as on eBay; custom domain name and e-mail support, that will provide clients with private domain-name registration, plus 100 company-branded e-mail addresses, each with 5 GB of storage. Microsoft is providing that services for free for the first year and $14.95 per year after that.Are any of these kinds of Microsoft and third-party company extensions of interest to you users of Microsoft business applications?