Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers in Search of Integration, Part 2: Importance of Support

For companies with a need to connect Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 or CRM Online to other business applications, especially when the systems are a mix of on-premise and cloud deployments, Azure AppFabric has become a viable platform-as-a-service (PaaS) option for developing custom integrations.  

Just this week Microsoft released Version 5.0.6 of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK on MSDN library.  According to Jim Glass on the Dynamics CRM Blog announcement, "this release is primarily to update the tools and documentation for the upcoming release of Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Services (ACS) 2.0," including an updated Plug-in Registration Tool to work with Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Services (ACS) 2.0."

But Azure AppFabric is a still a new option that is still only in use by early adopters.  What tools are companies turning to today?  For serious integration challenges, most Dynamics CRM customers looking to bridge their cloud and on-premise deployments still look to a more robust solution with the benefits that a real software vendor can provide.

Integrated Dynamics CRM using commercial software

Anyone considering a custom listener via Azure AppFabric can't ignore the fact that the owner of such an application takes on their own responsibilities when it comes to receiving, validating, logging, and otherwise acting on the incoming notifications from Dynamics CRM.  And that additional work is where many IT managers may think twice about going with a custom integration - especially for a more common integration scenario. 

"It's just one piece of the puzzle," says Girish Raja, technical evangelist for Dynamics CRM at Microsoft.  For example, when it comes ...