Tatarinov Underscores Microsoft’s Commitment to Dynamics Product Line, Opportunities During Economic Slowdown

Presenting at the opening keynote of Convergence 2009, Kirill Tatarinov expressed Microsoft's commitment to Dynamics products, the opportunities he sees to maximize the use of existing tools, and the desire to see attendees to use the macroeconomic crisis to their advantage in reshaping business processes with Dynamics.  

Less than 7000 attendees made the trip to Convergence 2009 in New Orleans, a number that Microsoft is trying to put in the best possible light given financial struggles and travel restrictions in place at many companies.   Microsoft touted customer success stories with real value statistics in testimonials.  Figures ranged from increased implementation speed to reduced training time to reduced IT expenses to shortened ROI cycle time to faster month-end close.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online March 2009 Service Update was announced at the keynote, which included a new SLA (99.9 percent uptime commitment), new features for simple Internet lead capture, and broader integration with Cloud services.  Tatarinov described Dynamics CRM as "recession proof" because even now "there is nothing more important than connecting with customers".  Tatarinov also announced that EDS will offer a global hosting product for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, expanding the list of partner-based hosting opportunities in addition to on-premise and Dynamics CRM Online.  

Looking back on recent accomplishments in the Dynamics product line, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions pointed to the role-tailored user experience as a major achievement of the last two years.  Demonstration of UI improvements included dynamically populated multi-dimensional search results, mobile applications for GP workflow processing, custom web interface for customer services (which they bluntly but seamlessly transitioned into a sales opportunity in Dynamics CRM) using one of the new Dynamics CRM Accelerators, warehouse management on a mobile device, and some flashy prototypes of Microsoft Surface applications integrating with Dynamics AX 2009 on the ...