Microsoft has written to Salesforce.com and Oracle punters urging them to ditch the cloudy database offerings of Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison in favour of its own CRM system.

But in order to convince them to make the switch, the software giant is also, somewhat desperately, waving a wad of cash in the faces of Salesforce and Oracle customers with its "Cloud CRM for less" offer.

The company’s sales, marketing and ops veep Michael Park has told Salesforce and Oracle fans that Microsoft would rebate “eligible customers” up to $200 for each user that moves to its Dynamics CRM Online product between now and 30 June next year.

“The offer can be applied for services such as migrating data or customising the solution to meet unique business needs,” said Microsoft.

In effect, the rebate would act as compensation for customers agreeing to shift from Salesforce or Oracle over to Microsoft, which of course could cost organisations considering such a switch a hefty amount of money.

Microsoft’s latest effort to grab more customers for its online CRM product was announced on the same day that Salesforce, which has around 87,000 people signed up to its cloudy wares, kicked off its DreamForce conference in the US. ®