Microsoft Promises Convergence Attendees That Dynamics CRM Live Will Be “Broadly Accessible” This Spring

After much talk and promotion during the past year, Microsoft has finally committed itself to making available CRM Live “this quarter, by the end of June,” according to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, speaking at Convergence 2008. And the company indicated that it has customers of Salesforce.com very much in its marketing crosshairs. “They are only available online,” Ballmer said of Salesforce.com, to several thousand Convergence attendees in Orlando. “We give you choices.” The subscription-based on-demand service will be managed from Microsoft datacenters. Microsoft in its press release announcing the commitment to making CRM Live “broadly accessible” this spring included prominently the reasons why one Salesforce.com customer migrated to Dynamics CRM. According to James E. Soto, president of Industrial Strength Marketing Inc., “With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we’ll be able to launch our new Web development initiative and, with the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface, watch our training costs go down.” Indications are Microsoft could have a hot seller in CRM Live. At a Convergence session Tuesday sponsored by the Dynamics user group, Dynamic Communities (www.dynamiccommunities.com), overflow crowds filled sessions on “Mobile Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.” At one session, about 15% of the 150 attendees said in response to a presenter question that they have deployed mobile devices to access Dynamics CRM, but the majority said they expect to deploy it within a year. Mobile solutions enables users of handheld devices to plug into on-premise CRM and, very shortly, will enable them to plug into CRM Live. The presenters, representing makers of third-party software, pointed out that wide differences in hand-held devices—including Pocket PCs, Blackberrys, and Treos, among others—complicate the process of establishing mobile CRM. “Different devices each have different architectures,” stated Sean Gocher, president of TenDigits Software Inc. Other issues can include delays between when data ...