Avanade Delivers CRM as a Service

Mark Leaming, vice president of the online services group at Avanade, said the Accenture service will be different from what Microsoft and others offer in that Accenture will extend the CRM software with a variety of productivity packs to provide capabilities such as integration with Microsoft SharePoint, encrypted fields, and rules-based configurations of user interfaces. Leaming said those productivity packs will ultimately be shared with Microsoft, given the nature of the relationship between the two organizations, but added that Avanade would continue to innovate around the Microsoft CRM software.

Leaming also said that Avanade will be delivering integration software as a service later this year in the form of an implementation of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service and that the company was studying whether to deploy an ERP service based on Microsoft’s software. He also noted that at some time in the future, he expected Avanade to deploy its CRM software on top of Azure, but for now the company is using infrastructure that Accenture developed to run an online reservation system for several commercial airlines.

A recent survey conducted by Avanade found that CRM, followed by business intelligence, have become strategic applications even when delivered as a service.

Customers can trial the AOS service for 30 days at no cost.