New version of Microsoft CRM 3.0

When Microsoft talks, people listen. This week, folks are listening to the announcement of its new version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 product, the Professional Edition for Service Providers. The product was released at Convergence, Microsoft Business Solutions Group’s annual customer show, with Microsoft product marketing director Kevin Faulkner touting it thus: “With this pre-provisioning, you can set up a system and configure it to Exchange server before you even know who the customer is.”

The product sports application connectors which can be exploited in a hosted single-tenancy mode to Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, and Microsoft’s Dynamics GP (née Great Plains), NAV, and AX business applications. Connectors to non-Microsoft applications are expected in the third quarter. The move was part of Microsoft’s bid to target the VAR channel. Indeed, Enterprise Applications Consulting senior analyst Josh Greenbaum was quoted on sci-tech-today.com as saying that Microsoft may become the industry leader in supporting VAR. “The VAR strategy is the core of the Dynamics product line, and the one thing it does for Microsoft is it gives them enormous distribution potential, with 9,000 VARs,”