In his keynote address yesterday at Microsoft’s annual Convergence conference in San Diego, Steve Ballmer told attendees he is going up market with on-demand versions of the firm’s enterprise applications. Dynamics, the company’s brand of ERP and CRM offerings, will target large enterprises with an on-demand model, going into direct competition with SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com. Asked whether the move would displace partners, he replied: “Will partners potentially be dis-intermediated [by on-demand software from Microsoft]? The honest answer is yes. But we’re not sure in what ways exactly,” Ballmer told the audience, as reported in eWeek. “Every industry evolution does change the way we interact with partners. Fifteen years ago there used to be a business to integrate TCPIP stacks into Windows. That doesn’t exist any more.”

For more on Microsoft:
– read this eWeek article