I like the fact that I can look for someone on the web without having to leave Outlook. Here’s a write up I did, focusing on the healthcare portion of Microsoft Dynamics since it is a healthcare blog, but pick up on the “who’s that person” from Firefox if you have not already found it, great tool as well.

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2009/03/microsoft-crm-integrating-with-zoominfo.html

What is the nature of the “deal”? Or was this just an issue of word choice? In my opinion “deal” typically means (a) exchange of money and/or (b) some notion of exclusivity. I’m aware of neither.

Certainly no exclusivity as Hoovers and ZoomInfo both announced their integrations with Microsoft this week for Convergence. And InsideView announced it’s integration way back in September – http://tinyurl.com/akau84

http://www.healthsitedirectory.com

I think that some of the main reasons these software titanic acquires other companies is because:

#1) retain existing customers (which is something that takes time to build).

#2) retain the brand name (again it is something that takes time to build).

These software titans can develop anything, even if they’re very complex and this is fact. One just have to take a look at the number of peer review research papers that are pouring out from the Web Search & Mining group at Microsoft Research, Asia Division. The selected publications available from the Web Search & Mining group, does cover everything that ZoomInfo software does and perhaps go beyond the capability of ZoomInfo system. This shows that Microsoft (or Google, IBM, et al) already know what other products from different vendors can or can’t do. They would go ahead and develop it if their management see a market for it and it has business advantage. They can do it if they want to. But in the business world, it is easier to form partnership with someone who’s already in there in that domain, while evaluating whether to develop those product yourself, acquire others or stick with the partnership.