Adoption of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Hitting Inflection Point, says Cloud CRM Award Winner

Microsoft recently handed out its 2015 partner awards in the lead up to Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC 2015). Four categories recognize partners in the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM space, each with a winner and three finalists.

US-based Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner PowerObjects won this year's new Cloud CRM award. The award is separate from the other general CRM award, which the company also won in 2013, and it is a variation on 2014's "Microsoft Dynamics Cloud" award. We spoke with PowerObjects executive Jim Sheehan for his take on running a successful CRM practice in 2015 and how CRM in the cloud is changing the posture of Microsoft partners.

MSDW: You said in a recent video that you've been working from the same strategy for many years. Has differentiation between CRM Online and on-premise been a factor in that strategy?

Jim Sheehan: In a true sense, cloud CRM [from Microsoft] is really subscription based software run in their data center. When you get into cloud computing, there are other benefits in terms of compute resources that can expand and contract depending on your needs, among others. You get that in CRM but that's not the main benefit. They want someone else to run the hardware.

The cloud has also factored in via the consumption structure with a fixed price subscription basis. So a lot of our strategy has been aligning what we ...