Updated Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction is now out
Link below to CRM team blog announcement. My take and summary (totally and completely MY opinions based on my quick read, take it for what you will). Kudos to the team for continuing to publish these. Thanks.
The Good:
- pages and pages of Accelerator info, 8 pages and some dozen individual accelerators- this really shows the integration capabilities and teamwork between internal and external CRM teams and they can offer some pretty cool tools too
- V.Next info- woohoo, more details emerging about the next version to drop in 2010. More than 20 new sets of improvements are named and will certainly whet the appetite of any CRM enthusiast
- Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 support- as these trickle into the marketplace CRM will be supported and I can tell you from my personal experience, it has been darn near seamless for my CRM going from Vista to Win7.
- xRM has a whole page :-)
The Not So Good:
- many of the accelerators are not yet released and have vague release dates, yes I know there is lots in play here, but wish it could be a more regular release of these. Tease us, then make us wait? Now please.
- xRM does not yet have its own SKU. At some point it will fully grow up and become a full-fledge respected platform. It has the capabilities NOW, it just needs the backup from a company perspective, so come on Microsoft, SKU it already, k? I can forward to you all the ideas I have and have received about how best to package it, just ask.
- comparison of Online and On Premise is a little deceiving. Yes, it is essentially the same, the same code base, etc. For better than some 90% (or more) of implementations, there IS no difference. But, with that said, there are SOME differences and in the same document talking about xRM, these differences might matter. CRM Online is really a rich application platform (I use it myself for a few difference platform implementations), but at the end of the day, there are at least a handful of differences. Maybe those will disappear in V.Next?
The document is available on both Partner Source and Customer Source. If you don’t have access through one of those resources and are interested, let me know, I’ll get a copy to you.
Comments