CRM Online myth busters

DISCMLAIMER: Parts of this blog post contain my opinion and don’t necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer, nor is it an official endorsement by Microsoft of any of the tools / technologies I mention.

I’ve been in my new role, focusing on Dynamics CRM, for about 7 months now.  Having focused on Windows Azure as an evangelist since it was announced at the PDC in 2008, I was very much in “cloud mode” when I joined this team.  WOW, has it really been 4 years since Azure was announced?  Time flies.  Anyway, one of the first questions I had when I joined my new team was “Why aren’t we talking to our customers about CRM Online more?”  The general feedback I got from teammates and partners was that there were a few key things missing that enterprise customers need.  Those things were available on-prem, but not online.  Of course, I wanted to know, very granularly, what these things were.  As I learned about the perceived limitations of CRM Online for enterprise scenarios, I discovered some of them were real, while most were either myths or required one to step back and understand how to design a solution for the cloud.  I also discovered that while I had been immersed in the capabilities of Windows Azure for quite some time, most folks building Dynamics CRM solutions were not.  Windows Azure is an important piece of the CRM Online solution puzzle for certain scenarios.  … read more …