ISV Solutions – The Jewels in Microsoft Dynamics Strategy

"Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

    --Victor Hugo

How can a small Icelandic organization go global and challenge the Goliaths like SAP with a fantastic retail solution on Microsoft Dynamics platform?  The answer to this question lies in the very nature of the ISV, or Independent Software Vendor, role in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. 

ISVs are a breed of organizations who build their software solutions to work in a niche or in concert with a larger software firm's technologies.  In the case of Microsoft Dynamics, ISVs have long found a suite of ERP and CRM products for which they can create their own applications. This ecosystem offers innovative, solution-driven companies the opportunity to align with Microsoft platforms and Dynamics in particular and present end to end solutions on the Microsoft platform. All this builds originality, creates new solutions for the transforming world to evolve into a bright future.

In the case of Iceland-based LS Retail, they created a smart retail application on the Microsoft Dynamics platform. They took it along with Microsoft sales prowess into 60+ countries and through 120 Microsoft partners. Today, they have 1.500 companies with 27.000 stores operating over 55.000 POS terminals worldwide.

The more I explore, the more interesting the analysis becomes. How can a small Icelandic organization go global? Would they have achieved this triumph as a stand-alone product company?  In India, we have 100+ LS Retail customers which is more than SAP's IS retail base. Wow! There is certainly serious strength behind this strategy.

Move further: applications like Zap or