At Parafest 2014, Microsoft lays out the Parature opportunity for Dynamics CRM partners

At this week's Parafest event, Parature's annual user gathering, the needs of customer service organizations are front and center. CMO and co-founder Duke Chung talked about the future of customer service, which he believes will need to embrace more complexity, driven by factors like greater self service capabilities and rapid data growth coming from customers - and their devices - across multipe channels.  

But this year's event, with the presence of Microsoft, is also an opportunity to begin introducing a handful of key Dynamics CRM resellers and ISVs to the product, the roadmap, and the opportunities that will come out of the acquisition. 

Several of those Dynamics CRM partners have sent management-level representatives to attend sessions, meet with the Microsoft and Parature executives, and meet Parature users. They say that, so far, they are optimistic about the opportunities that the Parature acquisition creates for both Microsoft's competitive position and for partners' consulting opportunities, but many questions remain.

Shortly before the event, Dynamics CRM partners were given sandbox Parature environments to explore. The first discovery, one partner said, was that the system is far from trivial to set up properly. Fortunately, this week's how-to sessions at Parafest are giving them more insight into the depth of the product, its design goals (like deflecting new tickets), and its reporting capabilities. The early verdict - they see it as a reasonably strong product that still has some critical areas that are relatively immature.

Microsoft partners at the event say they want to learn about several key aspects of the Parature product and its delivery. From a ...