The Bloor Perspective: Microsoft does CRM, the Liberty Alliance and Scient's nadir

Microsoft last week unveiled further details about its CRM product that should hit the shelves towards the end of this year. The product, Microsoft CRM, is gunning for the medium-sized enterprise and hopes to provide a solution that will be tempting to all. As such it's coming in a couple of flavours: hosted application or off-the-shelf.

It's all very exciting but not necessarily hugely compelling. The product is based around a loose collection of technologies that Microsoft has acquired over time, most notably perhaps Great Plains Software and, ultimately, Navision. Naturally, it's more intrinsically tied to the likes of Outlook, with its email and calendar options, and SQL Server, Microsoft's database.

The latter is essential to underpin the whole thing. It's not clear yet if other database solutions will be supported but you can only hope they are. Pull all of this together and you have a system that will manage your emails, contacts and provide some level of account management services too.

Microsoft is aiming this at organisations with between 25 and 500 employees. It's more likely that sales will go to the lower end of that figure and, for organisations of that size, this will be a logical fit for their operations. They don't want to be buying an Oracle or Siebel system. They want something that they can snap straight in.

Microsoft has, by the sound of it, produced a reasonable, mid-market, first generation product. It's expected to retail for around $1,200, which isn't bad considering that gives the server too, or there's an enterprise edition which is more than double that price. That's also compelling, it will make sense for many users and, again, Microsoft will do well with this first attempt to muscle into the traditional enterprise software space.

*Liberty Alliance rides into town*

The Liberty Alliance has revealed initial plans for its web identification program. This version, Version 1, hopes to address the problems associated with the much vaunted single sign-on process, and is therefore tackling account management. It looks like very interesting stuff but there is a long way to go before it reaches maturity - and a lot of problems to overcome en route.

The stated goals of the Liberty Alliance are:
- To allow individual consumers and businesses to maintain personal information securely.
- To provide a universal open standard for single sign-on with decentralised authentication and open authorisation from multiple providers.
- To provide an open standard for network identity spanning all network devices.

In other words, it's trying to produce a common, universally accepted method for identifying individuals online across multiple domains. It's very much like Microsoft's Passport. But without the bite.

The idea is that you could, for instance, log in to silicon.com, click on an advert for HP, make a purchase and then go straight through to your bank to check your balance without the need to sign-on again. It's a lovely idea. And that's what this release of the Liberty proposal is edging towards.

The Liberty Version 1 specifications focus on interoperability between systems. In the first instance this has covered options like:
- Account linking - giving people the opportunity to decide to link services into the Liberty system.
- Simplified sign-on - giving single-sign-on processes for any service that has been opted into the Liberty process.
- Authentication context - which will cover the range of authentication required by the members.
- Global Log-out - which will enable all of the accounts that have been opted in to be logged out in one fell swoop.
- Liberty Alliance Client - which is the client side solution to the whole affair.

This isn't where it ends though. The Liberty Alliance, in combination with this announcement, also revealed some supporters, including Entrust, Novell and Sun, that are preparing to launch Liberty enabled products and services. It also made a point of mentioning it is already well under way with developments for Version 2.

The crucial difference between Liberty and Microsoft's Passport is that Passport is easy to implement. Microsoft is rolling out Passport across its own operations, making data management and authentication comparatively easy.

Liberty, on the other hand, will operate as a federated collection of supporters that are physically and commercially no closer than a signature on a contract. That means there is going to be a long hard battle to get this right - especially once other devices like mobile phones are considered. But let's keep our fingers crossed.

*Scient test*

Scient, the one time darling of the internet consulting world, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US. The company said it is also selling many of its assets to professional services outfit SBI.

A statement on the firm's website suggests the assets being acquired are almost strictly people and existing contracts. It says the SBI 'acquisition' will allow it to continue working with its customers, who in turn will be working with exactly the same Scient people. That's the suggestion anyway.

Further to this, SBI will also provide some 'debtor-in-possession financing' of $4.9m to Scient.

The move is a bit of a shocker from this former stock market sweetheart. But times are tough. As Scient says, it is selling up to SBI in the hope it will enhance Scient's ability to deliver superior services to its clients with an even greater range of capabilities, combined with being part of a firm with strong financial performance and solid financial backing.

That's always been the problem with Scient, of course. It hasn't been able to balance the books. Hiring a workforce as skilled as it once had costs money and since the dot-com balloon burst the contracts coming through the doors of many of these internet consulting houses have all but dried up.

Over the past year to 18 months, Scient has struggled to get its ship in order - culling staff, undertaking reverse stock splits. But obviously this hasn't been to good effect.

Bloor Research is a leading independent analyst organisation in Europe. You can find out more at http://www.bloor-research.com or by emailing mail@bloor-research.com.