Understanding Microsoft's Social Intelligence Alliance with InsideView for Dynamics CRM

For an ISV in the Microsoft Dynamics channel, it doesn't get much better than Microsoft putting a version of your product directly into the new release.  Sales intelligence vendor InsideView becomes the most recent beneficiary of such an agreement, with its new "Social Intelligence Alliance" that both companies promoted at Convergence 2012.  For Microsoft, InsideView offers a reasonably quick way to add social CRM dimensions to its basic solution without slowing down to build out their own vision from scratch.  For InsideView, it allows them to push even further into the Dynamics customer base, which, CEO Umberto Milletti tells us, has already become their fastest growing market segment. 

We sat down with Milletti to discuss the new alliance, the Dynamics CRM ISV ecosystem, and his company's product plans.

MSDW: Tell us about the new alliance with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to put the products together

Umberto Milletti: We call it the social intelligence alliance.  We see that wherever you're customer facing, social media is now providing a new way for you to understand your customers and prospects and be more relevant to them.  Our product inside the CRM platform is all about analyzing information and bringing information to end users and helping them be more productive in their jobs. 

Our application has been available and successful in the Dynamics Marketplace for some time, but there is nothing like integrating straight into Dynamics.  So this alliance is really about co-development to work closely with Microsoft and over time integrate our application out of the box so it is embedded in Dynamics CRM.  And so what we chose ...