I heard a rumour that Google had released a CRM product, so I decided to scour the Net to find out what it could do. It looks fairly capable, but I’m not too sure about the interface. As this is a beta application, I’m sure that improvements are going to be made, but at the moment, it seems to suffer from an identity crisis.

From the example you can see that Google have included it into their homepage system. Now, I can’t imagine that this would be a wise choice as information is designed to be presented as a “homepage” and it doesn’t really work for CRM.

Maybe more investigation is needed to find out exactly what Google has planned (if they’re even sharing this kind of information). Software as a Service vendors may have something to worry about if Google seriously decide to step into this ring.

An interesting press release I stumbled across from Microsoft makes brief mention of it’s CRM strategy. I find it very interesting that Microsoft are choosing to enter this market, although not as aggressively as I would have thought. Word is on the street that they haven’t been pushing it too far because their CRM solution was left wanting, but also it is rumoured that they are bringing a new CRM solution to market that may turn the tables.

It will pay to keep a close eye on Microsoft over the next little while to see what happens.