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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Will Move to Windows Azure in 2012, VP Says

by Jason Gumpert
Editor, MSDynamicsWorld.com

Microsoft corporate vice president from the Server and Tools division Bob Kelly told an audience yesterday  that Dynamics CRM Online will be hosted in Azure by the end of 2012.

"MSCRM, by the end of 2012, will be a native application on Windows Azure," he told the audience at the Merrill Lynch Technology Conference.  The comments came in Kelly's broader discussion of Azure as Microsoft's cloud platform, including the benefits to developers and third party services from both inside and outside of Microsoft. The full presentation recording is online here.

Microsoft Dynamics representatives declined to confirm Kelly's statement, stating only that "The next versions of Microsoft Dynamics GP and NAV will be cloud enabled for Windows Azure by the end of 2012. We also intend to move Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to Windows Azure. We have nothing further to share at this time."

Dynamics CRM Online was brought to market before Windows Azure really got off the ground, forcing the CRM team to develop and maintain their own hosted architecture for the application, database, and other computing infrastructure across thousands of servers.  While analysts have been asking for some time when a move to Azure would happen, it is a detail that few customers or partners have raised as a priority given the apparent stability of the current architecture.

Directions on Microsoft's research vice president Rob Helm first noted the Azure announcement for Dynamics CRM on his Twitter feed.

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About Jason Gumpert

As the editor of MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason oversees all editorial content on the site and at our events, as well as providing site management and strategy. He can be reached at jgumpert@msdynamicsworld.com.

Prior to co-founding MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason was a Principal Software Consultant at Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), where he implemented solutions, trained customers, managed software development, and spent some time in the pre-sales engineering organization. He has also held consulting positions at CSC Consulting and Monitor Group.

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