Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP Advises on Summit Updates, Possible Convergence 2013 Themes

The annual MVP Summit is a big deal for Microsoft MVPs. For the rest of us, it is not much more than a reminder that MVPs know more than us and they can't share any of it due to a fearsome Microsoft NDA.

But Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP Leon Tribe has gone the extra mile, taking his blog readers' MVP Summit questions, getting them ok'd by Microsoft, and coming back with approved answers.  The result is actually not all that much brand new information, more a confirmation of recently revealed news and inference.  But Tribe is able to reinforce some new developments and raise other interesting details, some of which have a good chance of getting some attention at Convergence 2013 in three weeks.

Microsoft's stance on development and test environments with Dynamics CRM Online still has no definitive answer.  Tribe notes that Office 365's support of multiple CRM instances on one account could help, but relatively high fees for each instance would probably make this option unaffordable for smaller businesses.  "In fact, it may be cheaper to fire up a new Office 365 account, add in a couple of users for testing and pay for it this way i.e. $50 per user per month or thereabouts," Tribe suggests. "There may even be an option of firing up an ‘on-premise' version on a cloud IaaS with an MSDN license, if it is for development."

For a question on handling fixes and updates, Tribe reverted to information revealed at Extreme 2013 in Rome.  With the recent on premise update rollup problems, Microsoft has already made statements ...