Microsoft CRM: Getting the X-factor?

Microsoft's Dynamics CRM is starting to be used for more than just the traditional sales and marketing, according to the company.

Gary Turner, product group director for Microsoft Dynamics, told silicon.com: "What we see… is businesses that are not sales and marketing organisations taking Dynamics CRM as almost an application development environment wherever there is any kind of relationship requirement to be controlled or managed."

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The public sector and local government are already using CRM for non-traditional purposes, according to Turner: in healthcare, for example, it has been used for patient records management.

"There is a massive interest and appetite for building out and reinventing a lot of old and antiquated legacy systems in those worlds," Turner said.

Microsoft is even referring to the technology as 'XRM' both internally and externally to reflect the view that it can be used for a range of applications where customers in the traditional sense aren't involved.

"We see CRM application as having much longer legs in other markets than just in the classic CRM market," Turner added.

According to the Microsoft exec, the software-as-a-service version of Dynamics CRM - currently only available in the US - is likely to arrive in the UK at some point in 2010.

It's not Microsoft's first foray into the cloud: earlier this month the software giant launched its Business Productivity Online Suite, taking enterprise apps including SharePoint and Exchange online.