Microsoft's big win over Salesforce: HP signs up to six-year cloud CRM deal
Thousands of HP employees across its marketing, sales, and service operations will be using Microsoft's Dynamics CRM.
Salesforce recently snubbed Microsoft for an international cloud expansion led by AWS, but now the champion of "no software" has been pipped by Microsoft for a key cloud CRM deal with HP.
Microsoft announced on Monday it had secured a six-year deal to replace Salesforce.com with Microsoft Dynamics CRM online and Microsoft cloud services for thousands of HP employees across marketing, sales, and service operations.
Enterprise Software
According to the announcement, HP will use Dynamics for CRM online for its direct selling staff, partners, and services under a plan to integrate sales processes for HP's own sales reps and its channel partners.
Microsoft says an Azure hybrid cloud will power HP's Dynamics CRM, Office 365, and Microsoft's Power BI analytics.
HP, which has just agreed to buy Samsung's printer business for $1.05bn, last year separated from its enterprise services arm HPE to focus solely on printers and computers.
HP's chief operating officer Jon Flaxman told Fortune its sales team was using Salesforce CRM while services staff were using Oracle CRM. The move to an "end-to-end" deal with Microsoft made sense, he added. Also, HP wanted to drive more analytics and use of big data.
HP has 6,500 salespeople and 20,000 support staff and a total headcount of 50,000, with a further 6,000 set to come onboard after the acquisition of Samsung's print business.
However, the company has also announced plans to shed thousands of jobs this year.
Distinguishing itself from Salesforce's CRM focus, Microsoft highlights its recently-launched Microsoft Dynamics 365, a CRM-ERP cloud service that combines Dynamics EX ERP, Dynamics CRM Online, and Dynamics Financials, while also integrating Office 365, the Office Graph, and soon LinkedIn.
Microsoft may have also disrupted a partnership between Salesforce and HP to equip the HP's Windows-powered HP Elite x3 phablet with Salesforce1 CRM. According to Fortune, HP will be equipping 2,500 sales staff with the Elite x3 running Dynamics CRM.
Of course, all three companies are partners and rivals at different levels. HP is a key partner for Microsoft Windows, while Salesforce partners with Microsoft on Outlook and could have, if it hadn't already selected AWS as its preferred cloud infrastructure provider, been a key customer for Microsoft Azure.
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