Microsoft Offers Industry Analysts a New Dose of Its Dynamics ERP, CRM Direction

ERP and CRM industry analyst have gathered in Redmond this week for one of their periodic chances to hear the latest public and restricted information on the direction of Dynamics CRM and ERP products.  Microsoft seems to do a good job of keeping analysts up to speed on a range of details of the Dynamics business from the direction of the software - including the impact of related Microsoft technology - to customer wins, competitive positioning, and the partner channel. After all, this relatively small group influences a lot of ERP and CRM software buys, especially in the richer deals.  And fortunately for the rest of us, several of them are excellent tweeters. 

Here's a look at some of the more interesting observations and viewpoints we've seen so far come across the analyst meeting hashtag #fae11.  Some of it is fairly new information; some has already been covered to at least some extent.  They covered a good range of topics in the first day of the event, so we'll try to group together what we can:

CRM

While the ERP products, especially Dynamics AX, are generally moving as quickly as the CRM team when it comes to incorporating business intelligence technology from SQL Server team like SSRS, PowerPivot, and"Project Crescent", CRM still leads easily with its vision for an HTML 5 user interface and cross-browser compatibility while the ERP products are still talking Silverlight.  And it is probably no surprise that Skype makes an appearance in the Dynamics conversation.