Could Microsoft Partnership Be Bad For Salesforce.com

Very interesting article by Gene Marks about how Microsofts partnership with Salesforce could lead to Microsoft posing more of a threat in the field of CRM.

Many people I meet who are looking for CRM systems choose Salesforce because it’s an 'alternative' to Microsoft. [...] "Salesforce is now becoming as Microsoft as Microsoft Dynamics," a client recently told me, “So all things being equal, I might as well just go with the Microsoft product."

Will Microsoft come out on top after strong growth in the CRM market over recent years? 

Dynamics CRM is quickly catching up, both in number of users and implementations. In 2013, the company’s CRM product stood fourth behind Salesforce.com, Oracle and SAP controlling only 6.8% of the CRM market. But it grew almost 23% that year, second behind Salesforce.com.