REDMOND — Microsoft has merged together its Great Plains and Navision salesforces, and is integrating those 1,500 people into the Microsoft corporate salesforce.

The result? Microsoft's corporate sales team of 2,500 to 3,000 total will be in charge of selling the entire Microsoft software stack, including the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) small- and mid-size business (SMB) application-software products, to Microsoft's customer base.

The MBS brand and profit-and-loss (P&L) center stay independent. But the combined Microsoft salesforce will be charged with selling (and obtaining their quotas/commissions) for all Microsoft products, including the Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta wares.

"Sales and marketing from Fargo (the former Great Plains headquarters) is being absorbed into Redmond," says one Microsoft partner who requests anonymity. "The MBS P&L used to be very separate. Now its people and products are being plugged in all over the place."

The partner notes that whereas every Microsoft SMB partner formerly had a dedicated sales contact within MBS, these dedicated contacts are now focusing on the whole family of Microsoft products - not just the small/mid-size business offerings from MBS.

Microsoft executives speaking at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond on Thursday said that the company has been working on fully integrating its salesforces for the past six months. On July 1, the start of Microsoft's new fiscal year, the company made official its sales-integration strategy.

Orlando Ayala, senior VP in charge of Microsoft's fledgling small and midmarket solutions and partner group, told analysts and press that the melded salesforce "will be selling the whole stack."

Microsoft MBS Senior VP Doug Burgum talked about the "power of the unified field" in his remarks to financial analysts and press at the event. Burgum emphasized that integrator and reseller partners will not be cut out of the equation, however. He said that the unified salesforce will be compensated for working with partners.

The company is expected to make new partner programs explicit at the Momentum MBS partner event in October in New Orleans.