Best of 2011: Top Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stories of the Year

Microsoft aimed to boost its competitiveness in the fast-moving CRM market by firming up its Dynamics CRM product direction and product release plans in 2011.  The company began executing on a new agile release model with a focus on a few key capability areas including social collaboration and support for more devices and more operating systems.  The company also acted to improve technical features needed in enterprise opportunities with federated authentication and plans for improved development options for CRM Online.

2011 was also an exciting year for the partner channel serving Dynamics CRM companies.  Cool new add-on solutions and heated competition among ISVs resulted in many strong new releases in fields like mobility, marketing automation, and social collaboration.

We covered a lot of Dynamics CRM news this year. Here are the top stories of 2011- in no particular order - based on reader interest:

Microsoft Announces Launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Cloud Service Globally with CRM 2011 Release

Microsoft has been running Dynamics CRM Online for three years, but 2011 was the year they made the service available worldwide through 40 countries and 41 languages starting in January.  They came out swinging against competitors with discounted pricing that far undercut Salesforce.com and Oracle.  The year continued with service updates and a new agile release schedule more fitting to the cloud CRM model.

Which leads us to...

Microsoft Launches First Wave of Social Features for Dynamics CRM in November 2011 Service Update

Jump ahead to the end of 2011 and Microsoft is making good on its agile release schedule ...