Microsoft Offers A Preview of xRM Updates For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5 at PDC09

At last week's PDC09, Microsoft officials unveiled more details on xRM capability updates in CRM "5", the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM due in the second half of 2010.  The enhancements include streamlining the development process, integrating more services natively into Dynamics CRM, as well as improving and promoting more integration with Windows Azure services.

One of the main goals of xRM in CRM 5 is to present an application development environment that reduces the infrastructure requirements and can be easily distributed easily to new systems, according to to Andrew Bybee, Principal Program Manager for CRM.  "[I]t's not just about on premise, but it's about taking that same solution and applying it in the on premises case, in the partner hosted case, and even in the online case," Bybee told attendees at a session on the xRM solution lifecycle.   

Bybee described xRM investments as a significant component of the CRM 5 release.  These investments will be seen through areas like:

• .NET 4.0 compatibility
• New web services capabilities for WCF, REST, and AJAX
• Portal integration
• Visualization
• Claims-based authentication and federation
• Auditing
• Transaction Support

Microsoft sees Windows Azure as a major component of xRM solutions for scaling of application users, data, and transactions.   xRM Evangelist Girish Raja provided an demonstration of a sample online application that gathers customer complaint information, queues the data online in Azure to accommodate potentially high traffic, and transfers it to a remote CRM 5 server  - either online or on-premise, in a controlled way through online integration technology they have labeled the "AppFabric ...