The New Dynamics: ISVs Will Deliver Added Functionality In ERP, CRM Apps

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At the recent Convergence conference in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft execs, including CEO Steve Ballmer, hammered home the point that the Dynamics line of ERP and CRM applications are no longer just for small and midsize businesses. And Microsoft will leverage SaaS technologies as a vehicle for providing new functionality for Dynamics customers.

"It is not about how the capability is being delivered," said Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, in a Convergence keynote speech. "It's about how capabilities meet customer needs," he said, adding that in most cases the added functionality will be delivered by Microsoft partners.

And those are concepts ISVs are buying into.

Idera, a Houston-based ISV, debuted SQLsafe for Dynamics, software for data encryption, backup and restore that works with Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, NAV and CRM applications. Idera, a division of BBS Technologies Inc., originally developed SQLsafe to work with Microsoft's SQL Server database. But as Dynamics applications and the data they process become more mission-critical, the company sees a market for Microsoft channel partners to bundle SQLsafe with their Dynamics-based solutions.

Idera is selling SQLsafe for Dynamics exclusively through the channel and the company's business plan calls for recruiting between 50 and 100 resellers this year to carry the product, said Nick Futter, vice president of channel development. The ISV is particularly seeking solution providers with vertical-industry expertise, although broad geographical coverage also is a goal.

Futter thinks SQLsafe for Dynamics is an attractive option for solution providers because many serve as the de facto IT manager for their midmarket customers, who often don't have a database administrator on site to perform the kind of data backup chores Idera handles. Noting that there are some 300,000 Dynamics deployments, Futter said: "This is a way for us to go after this specific market more closely aligned with the resellers."

Slated for availability this month, Semantra 2.0 lets users make ad hoc queries to retrieve information from the application's underlying database. That data can provide better visibility into sales pipelines, for example, and be used for sales forecasting and market analysis tasks.

Semantra CEO Chris Davis said his product's ability to provide workers with data without complex reporting and analysis tools ties into Ballmer's comments in his keynote address that Microsoft is continuously looking for ways to improve the user experience with Microsoft products. "This is the biggest need, the need for realtime decision making," Davis said.

Semantra 2.0 is the first release of the product to support a Microsoft Dynamics application. Semantra is considering supporting other Microsoft applications, including Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV. Semantra sells both direct and through channel partners, but relies on partners to provide customer service and support even for direct sales.

But businesses running Dynamics applications still need serious number-crunching data analysis. ProfitBase Inc., a Norwegian company with U.S. headquarters in York, Pa., previewed a new version of its ProfitBase 2009 data warehouse and OLAP (online analytical processing) software at Convergence.

ProfitBase, a Microsoft Gold certified partner, works with the SQL Server database (both the 2005 and upcoming 2008 releases) and PerformancePoint Server 2007. The company provides data source connector templates for Dynamics AX, GP, NAV and SL. CEO Borre Tharaldsen said interest in ProfitBase is especially growing among larger, multinational companies because of the product's ability to consolidate data from widely dispersed IT systems.

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