Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Microsoft CRM and Scribe

Scribe Software, a vendor of configurable data integration and migration software technology for leading business applications, has announced its release of the Scribe Adapter 4.0 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

The product “supports a customer’s ability to choose the deployment that best fits his organization by offering migration and integration capabilities for both on-premise and SaaS deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0,” according to the Scribes.

Implemented by thousands of Dynamics CRM customers, by hundreds of Scribe Certified Resellers, Scribe’s integration tool, Scribe Insight, is used for migrating and integrating customer data within a company’s CRM environment.

The Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, built on the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM API, supports the multi-organization capabilities now available to customers with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Bob Peskin, MSCRM Practice Director at Infinity Info Systems, an Elite Reseller for Scribe Insight, said Dynamics CRM 4.0, with its multi-tenant architecture and availability as a true SAAS application with CRM Live, “represents significant innovation.”

Microsoft CRM Adapter Released by Scribe

Scribe Software, a vendor of configurable data integration and migration software technology for leading business applications, has announced its release of the Scribe Adapter 4.0 forMicrosoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

The product "supports a customer's ability to choose the deployment that best fits his organization by offering migration and integration capabilities for both on-premise andSaaS ( News - Alert) deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0," according to the Scribes.

Implemented by thousands of Dynamics CRM customers, by hundreds of Scribe Certified Resellers, Scribe's integration tool, Scribe Insight, is used for migrating and integrating customer data within a company's CRM environment.

The Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, built on the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM API, supports the multi-organization capabilities now available to customers with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Bob Peskin, MSCRM Practice Director at Infinity Info Systems, an Elite Reseller for Scribe Insight, said Dynamics CRM 4.0, with its multi-tenant architecture and availability as a true SAAS application with CRM Live, "represents significant innovation."

Last October Scribe Software announced the planned release of its Scribe Adapter for Dynamics NAV. This product "extends the capabilities of Scribe Insight to Dynamics NAV, providing partners and customers with powerful and flexible data integration and migration without having to write a single line of code," company officials say.

Microsoft Dynamics customers use Scribe Insight for integrating applications with a variety of systems. "We have been using the Scribe Insight tool to provide our Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP customers with integrations," states John McKeague, Tectura GP and CRM practice lead, a Scribe Elite Reseller.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Microsoft CRM, Other Apps to be Provided for UAE's NIC by Itqan

Itqan a UAE systems Integrator & IT products provider, has been picked by the National Investment Corporation to install hardware and IT infrastructure encompassing work stations, cabling and networking as well as provide software products.


The project involves integrated applications products using Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains ERP, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007) and document management. It's expected to letNIC ( News - Alert) automate its operations with a stable infrastructure and improved security.

Feras Al Jabi, general manager of Itqan, in part credited his firm's "technological expertise" and reputation as a UAE-based systems integrator" for the contract.

Al Jabi sees increasing Itqan's presence in the vertical markets by offering higher end niche products. "Our strategy is to be multi-directional in expanding our market presence. While we focus on introducing new products to existing clients we are equally aim at new clients for our existing products."

Lots of these "National ____ Companies" or "Corporations" in the Emirates have been investing heavily in technology. Earlier this week Dubai-based Emirates National Oil Company subsidiary Leading Edge Technology Services announced a partnership with Dubai-based Palm Utilities to provide CRM and billing implementation services for the company's planned projects.

Saeed Khoory, ENOC Group CEO, said the partnership "not only provides LETS with a strong foothold in a rapidly expanding services sector," but helps Palm Utilities implement air cooling for residential and commercial developments in the region.

According to the agreement, LETS will provide implementation services for Palm Utilities' Oracle (News - Alert) Customer Care & Billing Systems as well as its two subsidiary companies, Palm Water and Palm District Cooling. The contract will cover implementation, training, documentation, integration, reports & printing solutions and cash point installations for CRM & Billing projects.

Keith Levers, Chief Operating Officer, Palm Utilities, said district cooling is "increasingly being accepted as the way forward with the mounting cost of energy and prevailing environmental concerns" in the United Arab Emirates.

Friday, February 8, 2008

A Radical Option For Yahoo: Out-Open Google

Yahoo is between a rock and Google. As Yahoo’s board decides today whether or not to accept Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer to buy the company, we’ve argued that it really only has two choices: accept the inevitable and go with Microsoft, or outsource search to Google. Both, are in their own way, admissions of defeat and riddled with potential problems. There is another option to consider, though. That is to hit Google where it hurts by truly opening up search. I will explain what I mean below, but first let’s go through the two obvious options.

Giving up search to Google might boost profits in the short term—because Google squeezes more than twice as much money out of every search—but it would set Yahoo on a long-term path towards oblivion (see, AOL). Merging with Microsoft is clearly the better option, but it may not be enough.

Big mergers tend to fail more often than not, especially when companies are trying to combine operations as opposed to adding on new standalone capabilities. One of Microsoft’s biggest mergers was Great Plains Software, which was a success specifically because Microsoft pretty much left it alone for a couple years and let it operate independently. That is not an option with Yahoo. the merger is a collision waiting to happen. Integration is going to be rough and will slow down the merged company. Nobody believes that a combined Microsoft-Yahoo will be a nimbler competitor than either bureaucratic organization is today on its own.

Not that any of this matters from Microsoft’s perspective. The logic of the deal is to gain scale as an advertising platform and as a Web publisher. the two go hand in hand. The more Web pages and traffic you have, the more ad inventory you have to sell. Everyone is focused on search, because that is where Google is so dominant today. But remember, while search ads make up about 40 percent of Internet advertising revenues, display ads still make up about a third. And that is where Yahoo is strongest. Microsoft needs to bulk up on display ad inventory before Google’s DoubleClick deal goes through. If it can fix search, that would just be a bonus.

A combined Microsoft-Yahoo will help it compete against Google in display advertising, which is still an open game. But giving up on search is not an option. Those display ads are becoming just as contextual and targetable as search ads, and soon the market will no longer separate the two. Advertisers will want to buy both as part of the same campaign. And Yahoo actually has an advantage here because it’s advertising system is set up to do that.

Which comes back to the question of how does Yahoo, or a combined Microsoft-Yahoo, make inroads in search. Every quarter Google adds to its market share in search. It seems unstoppable. Combining Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s existing search efforts won’t do much to reverse that trend. After all, two dogs don’t make a right. But there is a long shot Yahoo can try that could just turn things around. That is to open up search in a radical way.

The only way to fight Google is to use its own weapons against it. Google enters new markets by embracing open standards in areas where it does not currently compete. But when it comes to search and advertising (how it makes money), it is a black box. If Yahoo were to truly open up search, it could rally the efforts of hundreds of thousands of outside developers to take on Google on a hundred thousand different fronts.

While it is debatable whether or not they would collectively come up with a better algorithm than Google, they most assuredly would come up with better algorithms—better search engines geared towards specific types of searches (informational versus transactional) or particular niches (health, travel, business). Entrepreneurs could also use Yahoo’s index as a foundation to create entirely new ways to search (semantic, social,etc.). And over time, Yahoo could cherry pick the best of these and incorporate them into Yahoo’s official search engine, or simply sell search ads on thousands of different search engines across the Web. Imagine each Website, with its own customized search geared towards its audience. This has been tried before but has failed for several reasons.

As one former Yahoo executive tells me: “Yahoo should just open up their search APIs and let anyone take their search without ads, and hope the ads come later. Out-open Google.” What do they have to lose?

But wait, don’t both Yahoo and Google do this already? Not exactly. Yahoo does have open APIs for search, and one of Yang’s turnaround tenets is to open up Yahoo to developers more generally. But those search APIs are limited to 5,000 search queries per day. Anything above that, you have to negotiate a special deal with Yahoo. One startup CEO who has a such a deal with Yahoo tells me, “If we had more exposure to their raw data and better access to the paid search results, including conversion rates and the data behind them, it would help us a lot. We are limited in the amount of information we actually have.”

Also, while the APIs make it technically possible to mash up Yahoo’s search results with other results, or tweak them with your own algorithm, Yahoo prohibits developers from using any “non-Yahoo sponsored search elements.” As for Google, it has its own search APIs as well. But if you take Google’s search results, you are not allowed to re-order them, and you must also show Google’s ads alongside the results.

Letting other people re-order the rankings is the key to moving the ball forward on search. Yahoo has a very valuable asset in its index of the Web and its basic search algorithm. Letting others improve upon these is the only way to beat Google in the long run. Google’s greatest strength, its almighty algorithm, is also its Achilles Heel. Opening up its search results to all comers would destroy its business model. Yahoo has less to lose and more to gain. It would still have to be careful not to give away so much information that people would be able to game its regular search results, but there are technical ways to do that.

This would not be an easy road and would require a long-term commitment that is unlikely to come from Yahoo’s shareholders at this point. Yahoo’s board seem to have already lost patience with Yang, Decker, and the rest of Yahoo management, and might lack the confidence in Yang & Co. to pull this off. But here is an even more radical idea: what if Microsoft were to adopt this strategy post-acquisition?

Openness is certainly not in Microsoft’s blood. Yet Microsoft can afford to open up search even more so than Yahoo because it makes up such a miniscule portion of its current revenues. Again, the key to using openness as a strategic weapon is to be open in areas where you don’t compete, or don’t compete effectively. If Microsoft is truly serious about this being a “transformational” acquisition, then it should take the opportunity to try to transform the search industry, not just chase after Google.

Embracing openness would also transform Microsoft in another way. Even though, startups are not as scared of Microsoft as they are of Google, they still don’t trust Microsoft. A sincere commitment to opening up search would go a long way towards winning over the hearts and minds of those “developers, developers, developers.” Yes, it would go against pore in Steve Ballmer’s body, but it would also reinvigorate Yahoo, reinvigorate Microsoft, and maybe even reinvigorate Silicon Valley.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Microsoft CRM Portal Education Offered by Unitek

Unitek Education, an IT education and training organization, has announced the introduction of a personalized Microsoft (News - Alert) CRM portal, an educational product.

It's described by company officials as "a major upgrade" to its training tools and will provide users with "an enhanced interface and online experience," a "virtual gold mine of information for both business and IT professionals and Microsoft CRM customers."

Unitek officials said the company has courses for new users and customers upgrading from CRM 3.0. The Unitek CRM blog has posted information and tips for this release.

The purpose of Unitek's new CRM 4.0 portal is to provide a resource for clients and those "interested in improving their skill level with Microsoft CRM," company officials say. The approach is designed to encourage comments and questions from users of the portal to elicit feedback.

Unitek, recently named the Microsoft Training Partner of the Year, said they had identified a "distinct lack of personalized, one-on-one Microsoft CRM training." While there is a large amount of general CRM information across the Internet, Unitek thought they could carve out a market niche selling systemic portal training, categorizing and detailing case studies of working CRM examples inside the newly-published portal.

In December the new version of Microsoft Dynamics was offered under two product names: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for on-premise and partner-hosted deployments and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live for Microsoft-hosted deployment. It's designed with a single unified-code base for both on-premise and on-demand deployments, and has "the flexibility to change deployment models over time if their needs or preferences change," according to the Microsofties.

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM at Microsoft, outlined some new features as an advanced multitenant architecture that supports multiple customers per server, extended global capabilities including user choice of more than 25 languages and pervasive support for multiple currencies an new business intelligence capabilities, including cross-entity views and an end-user ad hoc reporting wizard.

This past October Microsoft Gold Partner Sunrise opened a joint venture company, Huamei Soft, in Xi'an as part of its Dynamics AX expansion.

Huamei Soft will focus primarily on offshore software development for the Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP system. Sunrise has invested in China in part to take better control of off-shore development operations.

Huamei Soft is located in the Xi'an Software Industrial Park, which was established in 1998 and authorized as one of the top five national software export bases. The Software Industrial Park will provide excellent infrastructure, value-added services on recruiting and training, and government support.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Microsoft CRM Training from Unitek

Unitek Education, an IT education and training organization, has announced the introduction of a personalized Microsoft CRM portal, an educational product.

It's described by company officials as "a major upgrade" to its training tools and will provide users with "an enhanced interface and online experience," a "virtual gold mine of information for both business and IT professionals and Microsoft CRM customers."

Unitek officials said the company has courses for new users and customers upgrading from CRM 3.0. The Unitek CRM blog has posted information and tips for this release.

The purpose of Unitek's new CRM 4.0 portal is to provide a resource for clients and those "interested in improving their skill level with Microsoft CRM," company officials say. The approach is designed to encourage comments and questions from users of the portal to elicit feedback.

Unitek, recently named the Microsoft Training Partner of the Year, said they had identified a "distinct lack of personalized, one-on-one Microsoft CRM training." While there is a large amount of general CRM information across the Internet, Unitek thought they could carve out a market niche selling systemic portal training, categorizing and detailing case studies of working CRM examples inside the newly-published portal.

Rezonance: Rapidly extend Microsoft CRM 3.0

[ Johannesburg, 1 February 2008 ] - Getting more out of Microsoft CRM 3.0 typically involves custom programming to meet the needs of individual clients.

However, with the introduction of a range of pre-designed and programmed extensions, Rezonance gives solution providers the ability to quickly customise Microsoft CRM 3.0 to meet a range of common customer requirements.

The result: a rapid deployment of solution that satisfies the customer.

Recently launched in Australia, New Zealand

According to Robert Mclean, technical specialist for Rezonance, the solution is a set of products that addresses frequently-requested additional capabilities from Microsoft CRM. "These requests include the ability to produce supporting documentation for regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley or Basel compliance, auditing capabilities and others," he says.

In deploying Microsoft CRM solutions for customers, Rezonance soon realised that many of these requests were similar, even from customers operating in different vertical markets.

"In the past, these companies would have to develop additional functionality from scratch. What Rezonance does is to introduce a re-usable system that can be quickly and easily configured by the users of the CRM solution to meet their particular information needs."

The extensions are available in bundles, which provide common additional functionality grouped according to function; for example, the System Bundle delivers Relationship Explorer, Alerting, E-mail Link and Console among other features, while the Sales Bundle provides Influence Manager, Forecast Manager and E-mail Campaign Scheduler functions.

Maclean explains that the company has built a complete management system into Microsoft CRM. "This allows the user to adjust various settings, pick out the information required and choose how to display it. Rezonance delivers a high level of customisability of the information presented to the user."

He adds that as a service-oriented solution, Rezonance also improves performance as it does not consume additional bandwidth; it is also fully secured to protect potentially sensitive information.

"A range of integrators are also available, which provide the ability to rapidly integrate Microsoft CRM with other elements of the enterprise architecture," Maclean adds.

Rezonance System Bundle Plus includes:

* Relationship Explorer
* Alerting
* E-mail Link
* Console
* Multi-Field Search
* Summary
* Data Quality Centre
* Rezonance Auditing

Rezonance Service Bundle Plus includes:

* Email to Case
* My Dashboard
* Subject Manager
* Customer Self Service Portal

Rezonance Sales Bundle Plus includes:

* Influence Manager
* Forecast Manager
* E-mail to Lead
* E-mail Campaign Scheduler
* Partner Self Service Portal

Rezonance Integrators include:

* System Management Server Integrator
* Microsoft Operations Manager Integrator
* Speech Server Integrator
* Office Communications Server

For more information on our solutions or on becoming a partner, please contact Robert Maclean: +27 875 3014 or mobile +27 73 142 5422