An Integrated Approach

A key plank of Microsoft's software development strategy is to create applications which can leverage the power of components provided within the Technology Stack, such as Windows SharePoint Services, Active Directory, Calendars or the Windows Workflow Engine.

We believe that a solution in which all components are seamlessly integrated and which can leverage the capability of all components is far more powerful than the sum of individual parts.

Many software developers often take a "re-invent the wheel" approach, for example a CRM vendor may write e-mail, contact and appointment management capability into their CRM solution. Typically their development budget would be in the region of £500K to £5 million (our estimate). A good chunk of this is, in our opinion, totally wasted: developing functionality that is not as powerful as Outlook and more importantly not familiar to users. In contrast, Microsoft has spent at least 10 times this R&D on both the PIM and CRM functionality and not duplicated or wasted effort because they have incorporated Outlook as the native CRM Client.

Having a seamlessly integrated stack of components from the application layer through the database layer to the operating system layer and all integrated with Office is we believe a powerful and compelling IT strategy.

It brings huge benefits in value, ease of deployment, success with user training and adoption.