Greetings from Convergence...

It's a Thursday afternoon here at Microsoft Convergence in Orlando, Florida, and I have finally found some time to sit down and do some work.  Yesterday, Steve Ballmer delivered the keynote presentation for the conference.  You can read through the transcript in about 20 minutes, or watch the video from that link.  It's definitely worth the time.

I've had a great time connecting with the chemical customers that are here at the event.  If any of you are checking out the blog, thanks for the time.  The recent release of Dynamics CRM 4.0 is generating a lot of interest from the chemical community (all size chemical companies) for sales, marketing and contact center scenarios.  Finally, a usable CRM system!

Dynamics ERP, especially Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV, continues to drive strong adoption in the small and medium-sized segment as well as continued interest at the enterprise-level for divisional or regional usage, or as quick and economical way to on-board new businesses into the mix.  This M&A scenario is continuing to drive interesting discussions.  You may be running Oracle or SAP as your enterprise ERP, but you may not want to drop that footprint onto every acquisition you make.  For the large acquisitions, you may certainly want to fold them into your enterprise ERP system, but what about all of the acquisitions you make in new regions or to fill out your product portfolio.  For those, you may consider a more appropriately sized solution, and use Dynamics in a hub-and-spoke configuration with your enterprise ERP system.  That's how we do it at Microsoft with our xBox supply chain, and we see it more and more in Pharma and the chemical industry.

One of our lead process industry partners for Dynamics is Fullscope.  They are part of our industry builder initiative and add process capabilities into Dynamics AX.  Take a moment and check out their solution overview. 

-Brian Willson