That said, this week Microsoft sweetened the pot significantly for existing and potential customers of the service.

A promotional offers Convergence attendees as many as 20 users at US$9.99 per user per month for six months. Microsoft also announced that CRM Online will have a 99.9 percent service-level agreement that gives customers a month's credit in the event of any unplanned outages.

"We want people to try it," Wilson said of the discount offer. "We thought we'd try to draw more attention to it and make it an impossible deal to refuse."