A Look Back: Judging our Convergence 2013 Predictions

When we locked our team of MSDynamicsWorld.com analysts, oddsmakers, and fortune tellers in a conference room before Convergence 2013 and coaxed out of them our event predictions, we thought they would turn out correct more often than not.  But now that the event has wrapped up, it is only fair to take another look and compare expectations to reality.

Prediction: The emergence of the Dynamics CRM App Strategy

Verdict: Correct. We already knew that under the leadership of Bob Stutz, the Dynamics CRM team is focused on transforming the product into a platform that can support high value applications around a common experience.  That mean they will be evolving the new user experience introduced in the Polaris release and applying it more broadly in Orion with the ability to deploy specific applications for specific business cases.  One of the most promising aspects of the vision: the ability to take the new application mentality and use the promised platform enhancements to support more sophisticated xRM applications beyond what Microsoft delivers out of the box.

But make no mistake: these are serious changes with real implications for customers, partners and solution vendors (ISVs).  Stutz's team is about to push into brand new territory, and vendors are privately concerned with the lack of transparency Microsoft has shown so far with regards to its plans.  Six to seven months before a major release is not a lot of time for ISVs to revamp their interfaces and align with the related platform changes.

Prediction: Dynamics AX "v.Next" will lead the way

Verdict: Not quite.