Convergence 2012: It’s a Wrap

Microsoft Dynamics CRM General Manager Dennis Michalis delivered the keynote for the CRM track on Monday. He identified four Big Trends for CRM, and talked about how they’re reflected in his team’s development efforts. I can’t think of a better organizational theme for an email like this one, so with thanks to Dennis, let’s dive in:

For Dynamics CRM, the big news in the Big Data category is that the Q2 2012 service update will fully leverage the just-released SQL Server 2012. On the reporting and analytics front, we’ll be able to use the Power View SSRS add-in. It will be available in the form of Power View templates available for download from the Dynamics CRM Marketplace.

Of course, Big Data need a lot more than reporting and analytics. Read this article on how the rest of the improvements in SQL Server 2012 will make Dynamics CRM more scalable, reliable and secure than ever.

Dynamics CRM Online, launched in April 2009, blazed the cloud trail for Microsoft’s business applications. Three years later it’s got a lot more company, with Office 365, the Azure development platform, and upcoming online ERP options for Dynamics NAV and AX. Microsoft customers’ cloud migrations started with a trickle, have become a steady stream, and could become a torrent if Microsoft executes on its aggressive plans.

Various flavors of Office 365 include the desktop applications, plus SharePoint, Exchange Online and Lync. Azure provides a cloud infrastructure for custom development. And the upcoming cloud options for NAV and AX means that, for a wide variety of organizations, an all-cloud infrastructure (i.e., no infrastructure as far as IT is concerned) will be possible.

While Microsoft is uniquely positioned to make the investment required for plans as aggressive as these, plenty of execution needs to happen as well.

Social CRM has gone from curiosity to mainstream in the two years since I referred to Convergence 2010 as the Social Convergence. And while it’s still as hard to precisely define it as it is easy for parents to embarrass their kids on Facebook, Microsoft has staked out a leadership role in the social CRM space. The Activity Feeds feature (released in the November 2011 service update) was a start, but Microsoft has aggressive — and very near term — plans to build on that initial investment.

In my view, the most important new items on the social CRM front is the following:

• Activity Feeds will be enhanced in the Q2 service update, with the ability to Like or Unlike posts, and improved post filtering capabilities such as (especially!) making data views available to filter posts (e.g., My Accounts, Opportunities Over $1M closing in the Next Month and so forth)
• A LinkedIn integration will be available as a managed solution, downloadable from the marketplace. I assume it will be free, although I did not hear that word used to describe it.
• An InsideView mashup will apparently become part of the core Dynamics CRM feature set. I once described InsideView as the ultimate Dynamics CRM mashup and I use it every day, so I’m really looking forward to this one.

In addition to all flavors of IE, the supported browsers will be:

• Safari running on Mac or iPad
• Firefox running on PC or Mac
• Chrome running on PC

The update will also include an enhanced mobility experience called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile. This is a new cloud-based, cross-platform native mobile client for Windows Phone 7.5, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices. This is a native client app — not a browser solution – so the mobile CRM experience won’t require an Internet connection, and will leverage the cool features of each platform.

CRM Online customers will be able to purchase mobile client apps directly from Microsoft in the Dynamics CRM Marketplace for $30/user per month; on-premise customers will need to continue to purchase a rich mobile experience from third party vendors such as CWR Mobility, the company Microsoft partnered with on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile application.