Dynamics Profile: From accidental CRM consultant to Microsoft MVP

These days Microsoft Dynamics CRM/365 MVP Nadeeja Bomiriya can be found working as a technical architect in the Dynamics 365 practice of Australian consulting and technology firm Oakton, and leading the local Dynamics community activities.

But Bomiriya, who lives in Melbourne, got involved with Dynamics CRM quite by accident in 2013 in an effort to fill an unexpected resource gap.

"Our CRM consultant had to leave the company and I had to very quickly pick up Dynamics and deliver the project," he recalls. "So it was totally by accident and I had no choice but to learn it. I had the .NET knowledge and the C# knowledge so it wasn't very difficult to pick up the plug-in side. I just had to learn the SDK a bit more and I did a lot of Googling and a lot of reading community sites."

Originally from Sri Lanka, Bomiriya moved to Australia around 2000 to attend Monash University where he studied computer systems engineering. His first job was as an embedded systems engineer, working on wireless network devices and networks and writing for microcontrollers - about as far removed as possible from Dynamics CRM.

Bomiriya then joined a local research and development company where he got a chance to work on Windows applications using .NET.

"I was there for a number of years and I was very keen on getting into development and enterprise applications so I did a bit of a career shift and moved to Canberra, which is our capital," he says.

He then began working as a consultant on ASP.NET and SharePoint, mainly for government organizations. Then ...