The world's largest software maker
Microsoft Corp.
(
MSFT
) acquired language analytics firm Netbreeze for an undisclosed
sum to strengthen its CRM product portfolio.
Switzerland-based Netbreeze specializes in social customer
relationship management (CRM), which includes the ability to
identify influencers, buzz analysis, topic analysis, tonality or
sentiment analysis, comparison between current to historical
postings via data archives and independent adjustment of search
configuration.
Further, Netbreeze can monitor a wide range of social
networking sites such as
Facebook
(
FB
), Twitter, YouTube and numerous other websites, blogs and
message boards. It also has the ability to analyze multiple
languages such as German, English, French, Spanish, Russian,
Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Mandarin.
Thus, Netbreeze's strength in multi-lingual analysis combined
with data mining and text analysis may provide Microsoft Dynamics
CRM the requisite tool for an in-depth analysis of customer
preferences.
Currently, social media data has become a very important tool
for companies to understand their target audience, which can make
or break a product as well as a company. Thus, Microsoft can tap
the monitoring and data analysis requirements of the business
communities by offering its CRM solutions.
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM team is quite active on the
acquisition front as it closely follows the acquisition of
MarketingPilot a few months back. MarketingPilot provides
marketing solutions that allow companies to better understand
customer choices, based on which they are able to create
multi-channel marketing campaigns.
Currently, just like other PC makers, Microsoft is also
battling the slump in the PC market caused by the sluggish
economy. In addition, the popularity of smartphones and tablets
from
Apple
(
AAPL
) and
Google
(
GOOG
) has been cannibalizing its core PC market. Thus, it makes sense
for Microsoft to strengthen its position in still-emerging
segments such as data monitoring services.
Microsoft remains one of the best positioned software vendors,
given its wide range of products, emerging markets strength,
continued technology deployment at data centers and growth in
cloud computing. We believe that Microsoft's current investments
are supported by its strong balance sheet and expect these to
drive the next growth phase, improving prospects of market share
gains.
Microsoft reported revenues, excluding deferrals, of $21.46
billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2013, up 34.0%
sequentially and 2.7% from last year, in line with our estimates.
All except the Entertainment & Devices segment grew both
sequentially and from the year-ago quarter.
Microsoft has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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