Microsoft Week

I've called this blog entry ‘Microsoft Week’ because that’s how it feels. I’ve been to three events, mostly centred around the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

The events were:

Tuesday - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Global Readiness Training

Thursday – Convergence Europe 2010

Friday - Dynamics Partner Conference

We had some great speakers and breakout sessions.

It’s an exciting time at the moment, as Dynamics CRM 2011 is in beta and scheduled for release in Q1 2011 – Initially online in the UK then on premises.

What was interesting about the three events, is that we had several sessions going through some of the functionality of 2011 by people from Microsoft in the US and UK, but we still seemed to pick something up that was new in each session.

What also came through many times was Microsoft's investment in Cloud services. It is becoming very apparent that this isn’t something Microsoft are ‘dabbling’ in, as if they think it’s another flag that can be waved – This is something they are serious about.

We were told that 70% of MS resources in terms of engineers etc were involved with Cloud services or integrating current technology to Cloud.

The key thing that came through was that it was possible to have a total cloud experience along with a hybrid one, using both on premises and cloud combined. During the events the demos were all live, using mostly cloud services (Interestingly hosted back in the US), and there was no apparent lag or delay….It all worked very well.

What's interesting now is coming away from these sort of events and thinking about all the previous potential clients that I’ve spoken to who may now look at a Microsoft CRM solution based in the cloud, as the investment in infrastructure is not as high a priority. It really does open up the possibility of using this great product for a whole raft of new companies. Along with the BPOS offering - http://www.microsoft.com/online/business-productivity.aspx -, this will fit a lot of peoples needs I feel.

I’m probably going to blog over the next few weeks some of the other cool features we’ve seen both this week and in our own Beta trials.