PUBLISHED: November 24, 2008
One question on the minds of most of the 4,000 participants at Convergence Copenhagen 2008 last week was this: what will be the effects of the current financial turmoil on our business?
Among the Microsoft officials in attendance, it was mostly an unspoken question.
Only Kirill Tatarinov, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions, addressed it to any significant degree, in his keynote address last Wednesday, and he didn't get very specific.
"The world feels like a different place," since the last time Dynamics users, partners, and ISVs assembled in Orlando last March, he said. "The world has experienced some difficult economic conditions."
He ventured that the current economic problems are different from those of the past, and will require that Microsoft and its partners and ISVs think more broadly to justify the software's adoption by prospects and upgrades by users. "Just reducing costs is not going to cut it," he said. "The number-one thing we must deliver is shareholder returns."
Out on the exhibit floor, a number of ISVs and partners said they saw...