FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Thursday, 15^th December 2005

Ground-breaking partnership makes Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 available to the majority of UK businesses through a unique subscription-based service.

ThinHost and ActiveIS today announce the availability of one of the UK’s first subscription-based hosted Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0 solutions, launched to coincide with the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 by Microsoft Corporation.  For the first time within a hosted environment, SME’s are able to utilise Microsoft CRM 3.0 without the need to deploy the required IT infrastructure locally.

There are over 4.3 million businesses in the UK, of which 97.7% have fewer than 20 employees.  Enterprises of this size are unlikely to have the expertise or budget required to invest in an onsite deployment of Microsoft CRM and its prerequisites.  Hosted Microsoft CRM 3.0 provides the key that will enable those 4.2 million small businesses to build lasting relationships across sales, marketing and customer service with an affordable, easy to use CRM solution from Microsoft.

“Hosted Microsoft CRM provides SME’s with the power of a corporate level CRM solution without the infrastructure cost” said Ricky Reemer, Managing Director at ThinHost. “This partnership allows SME’s to focus on developing their businesses instead of getting bogged down with IT.  Hosted services can provide a superior alternative through which business applications can be accessed.”

Microsoft’s entry to the market for subscription-based CRM allows SME’s to license Microsoft CRM 3.0 on an ongoing monthly basis, making leveraging Microsoft CRM an even more persuasive argument.

“ActiveIS is excited to partner with ThinHost to provide one of the UK’s first hosted Microsoft CRM 3.0. offerings.” said Dean Carlton, Business Development Manager at ActiveIS.  “We are proud to be the vanguard of Microsoft’s entry into the market for subscription-based licensing for CRM, and expect explosive growth for Microsoft CRM in 2006.  We are offering a financially attractive alternative to salesforce.com which provides users with a rich native Outlook experience and an unparalleled level of Office integration out-of-the-box.”

“ActiveIS is among a growing number of our partners who have seen the strategic value in hosting CRM for their customers.” said Jason Nash, Microsoft Dynamics CRM product manager, Microsoft Ltd.  “Microsoft is pleased to support ActiveIS through the Microsoft Partner Program, helping it to provide customers with greater choice and flexibility by offering a hosted version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a “Software as a Service” basis.”

Gerard McMurtrie, Managing Director at ActiveIS said “ActiveIS’s Microsoft CRM experience includes delivering one of the largest Microsoft CRM implementations in the UK.  With ThinHost’s experience in delivering Microsoft solutions, this partnership provides a powerful platform for the rapid deployment of hosted Microsoft CRM 3.0 solutions in response to the needs of small to mid-market organisations.”

The ThinHost technical infrastructure offers clustered Exchange and SQL servers running on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, providing a robust and scalable architecture to support a range of Microsoft and other applications from within a single managed environment.  Stefan Buxton, Business Development Director at ThinHost said “This infrastructure enables SME’s to operate their businesses on the latest Microsoft technologies, enjoying a level of application availability considerably in excess of that which they could otherwise achieve from locally deployed IT.”

The early support provided by Microsoft under the Partner Program has provided a unique opportunity that has enabled ActiveIS and ThinHost to launch this service to coincide with the official launch of Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0.

Unicorn IT Solutions Limited, trading as ThinHost, has provided SME based IT consultancy specialising in thin client technologies since 2001. This experience has been used to develop a hosting environment built to blue chip standards and hosted within a tier 1 data centre. ThinHost clients access their documents, applications and corporate back end over the internet without the need for any local deployment of IT assets.

Since 1997, ActiveIS Limited has provided best of breed and bespoke business solutions that help reduce cost and risk, whilst increasing productivity, revenue and operational efficiencies.  ActiveIS is a Microsoft Certified and Microsoft Business Solutions Partner, specialising in implementing, integrating and extending Microsoft CRM and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.  ActiveIS also provides award winning Web sites and bespoke .NET application development with a strong business focus.