For its part, Neocase, a veteran in the European market, made a strategic decision to align itself with Microsoft as a starting point to enter the U.S. market.

Rebecca Wetteman, vice president of research at Nucleus Research, called it a great lead generation strategy for a company just entering the United States. Microsoft uses a channel strategy rather than a direct sales strategy to sell its SaaS model of CRM 3.0, which Neocase can use to reduce its own marketing costs.

According to Neocase CEO Herve Pluche, his company has already signed on seven major Microsoft VARs to co-sell Microsoft, Neocase CRM solutions.

Neocase Version 10 can be integrated into Microsoft CRM 3.0 with the same look and feel on the front end, and at the back end, it can use the same database.

More importantly, Neocase will supplement what Pluche called Microsoft's "very basic customer service" component with its own robust capabilities.