Microsoft sees enterprise applications as key to future growth. BusinessWeek has a good overview of Microsoft's plans to establish itself as a dominant play in enterprise applications, such as ERP and CRM, for small and mid-size businesses. I wrote previously about the problems Microsoft will face in executing this strategy, especially in terms of competing against its current ISV partners and creating channel conflict among its resellers. BusinessWeek points out that Microsoft intends to train the 24,000 resellers of its system software to sell its applications also. I don't understand how this can fail to result in channel conflict and dissatisfaction among those value-added resellers (VARs) that really understand how to sell and implement enterprise systems.