The Microsoft-bias stems from the SplendidCRM teams' Microsoft expertise. According to president Paul Rony, SplendidCRM looked at and liked SugarCRM, but being a Microsoft house, decided they could do better job by using Microsoft tools while utilizing the SugarCRM look and feel.

'We were able to leverage their work, we were able to cut out a lot of effort, to create a new and better product,' said Rony. The bias is also down to the belief that many Microsoft-centric organizations will be unhappy working with PHP or lack the in house skills, and a feeling that Java failed to deliver on its write once/run anywhere promise.

The start-up opened for business in 2005 but has only really been pushing its wares this year and has just released version 1.4 of its CRM platform. It is putting itself up against some stiff competition, including Microsoft, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, while simultaneously working with Microsoft and SugarCRM, which begs the question why.

'The key is developing with Microsoft technology,' said Rony, 'it allows us to accommodate the same goals [as SugarCRM] but with fewer developers and fewer resources. Microsoft had the best development tools, encouraging developers to adopt the platform. We looked at SugarCRM and thought we could do the same or something faster with one tenth of the resources. That was a compelling reason to create a competing product.

Source: http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2007/05/open_source_crm....