Microsoft Expands Dynamics CRM Capabilities, Partner Opportunities

Microsoft channel partners are about to get their first look at the next release of the vendor's Dynamics CRM application, a product that's targeted for release sometime in the second half of 2010.

"Dynamics CRM 5.0 is deep in development right now," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in an interview at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. He said some test versions of the application would be in partners' hands within about 90 days.

Dynamics CRM 5.0 will sport improvements in the user interface and data visualization features, enhanced sales and marketing capabilities, and tighter integration with Microsoft's SharePoint Server collaboration platform, according to Wilson, who declined to disclose details.

Microsoft debuted the current version of the application, Dynamics CRM 4.0, in December 2007, followed shortly by the Dynamics CRM Online on-demand version of the application -- all to compete against CRM offerings from Salesforce.com, Oracle and other vendors.

On Monday, Microsoft said the number of Dynamics CRM seats sold by the company and its channel partners hit the 1 million mark.

In addition to growing sales of the application for traditional sales management tasks, Microsoft is pushing Dynamics CRM as a platform for what it calls "xRM" applications: software for managing a wide range of relationship management tasks.

Wilson cited examples of a bank that's using Dynamics CRM to manage relationships with its vendors, government agencies that use it to manage relationships with each other and an airline that's using it for managing workflows with cargo shippers.

Selling Dynamics CRM in conjunction with other Microsoft products such as SQL Server, SharePoint Server and Visual Studio for xRM purposes will be a growing opportunity for channel partners this year, Wilson predicted.

Microsoft also is expanding the reach of Dynamics CRM through the use of "accelerators," or plug-ins that partners and businesses use to tailor the application for specific tasks. Last week Microsoft unveiled three new accelerators for Dynamics CRM, joining eight other accelerators the company began selling last year.

A new social networking accelerator lets companies link Dynamics CRM to Twitter to monitor what customers are saying about a business and its products or services, analyze those comments and develop marketing responses to the "tweets." A partner relationship accelerator lets businesses adapt Dynamics CRM for managing sales leads and opportunities for channel partners. And a portal integration accelerator provides a way to carry out CRM activities through a Web portal.

The majority of businesses running Dynamics CRM, both on-premise and on-demand, have 1,000 or more users, Wilson said, with the largest in the range of 15,000 to 20,000 users. But last month Microsoft said a benchmarking test conducted with Intel showed the application can scale to 50,000 concurrent users.

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