For CoreMotives, Azure is the Answer for Scaling a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Add-On

One entrepreneur used to develop Microsoft Dynamics CRM add-ons for c360. The other used to buy them.

Now Jeremie Desautels, c360's co-founder, and Rhett Thompson, his former customer and an entrepreneur in his own right, have teamed up to create Windows Azure-based website analytics and marketing cloud service CoreMotives.  The offering feeds customer and prospect data from the cloud directly into Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

"We are helping companies understand who is interested in their products and close deals fast," Thompson said. "We saw the need for a suite of products that would snap into Dynamics without an install...that would solve a problem and be easy to start."

CoreMotives' story

About a year and a half ago, Desautels and Thompson began product development and marketing, gathered some beta customers, and got valuable feedback, while still operating in "stealth mode," Desautels said.

Atlanta-based CoreMotives' big break came last November at Microsoft's five-day BizSpark boot camp, which helped entrepreneurs migrate products onto its new Azure cloud platform and develop a proof-of-concept, Desautels said.

The camp was a key take-off point for CoreMotives, providing confirmation that Windows Azure was the right platform and motivating the company to complete its migration in time for Azure's release in January 2010. 

In addition, CoreMotives' selection as the "most viable business" by a panel of six judges at the conclusion of the event generated high visibility for the company, Thompson said.

"This was a good springboard for us," he said. "It pushed us to understand what our product could achieve."

CoreMotives consolidates customer and prospect data related to a variety of actions.  Its product generates sales action items based ...