The Key Note of Convergence

Many things, you can be sure, were discussed at Microsoft’s Dallas Convergence conference that were ‘extra-agenda’ items but the biggest headline and the most speculation centered around Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM products. Basically, the Dynamics product line will undergo a transformation over the next few years in two phases.

The first phase, going on right now, consists of the integration of making the various products in the Dynamics suite ‘look like’ and work within Microsoft’s Windows OS and their MS-Office suite. This integration will run right into the introduction of their new Vista Office product. As Dynamics is being integrated, new versions will, of course, be introduced. The idea is actually brilliant! Microsoft Office applications have become such a standard that most people are comfortable with them and are familiar with the interface.

Now (well almost now) the Dynamics applications will be able to operate behind the same familiar interface. As Steve Malme, senior director of Microsoft’s world-wide, mid-market sales is quoted as saying, "CRM is Office. I can’t tell whether I’m in Office or CRM." Many look at the integration of the Dynamics into the easy to use and intuitive MS-Office type scenario as a typical Microsoft ploy to freeze out the competition. Perhaps so! And, it will probably work up to a point, just has it has worked for these many years now but Microsoft certainly realizes that they are not and never will be the ‘only show in town;’ they just want to be the biggest and best.

No doubt about it, Microsoft plays to win, and who can fault them for that? The second phase of the transformation of the Dynamics product line is intended to make the various products work together under one ‘roof,’ with all four applications working on the same platform (an ERP version of MS-Office) or perhaps on two platforms, one for small business and one for the large enterprises. It appears that exactly HOW all of this integration and reconfiguration will take place is not down to an exact science but that it WILL, is almost a certainty.