Microsoft Dynamics CRM - By the numbers

Just got back from what seems like another one of the Microsoft conferences. Stopped counting the number after I couldnt use my 2 hands anymore.

Much like folks make the piligrimage to the 'Woodstock of Capitalist' conference to see the Oracle of Omaha, I've been doing the Microsoft conference routines. I have had my share from Convergences, World Wide Patner Conferences, BI Conference, Teched etc but one conference that I thoroughly enjoy is the Microsoft Convergence conference. Microsoft Convergence is basically geared towards the Microsoft Dynamics line of products (formerly known as Business Solutions). The Dynamics product which you may have seen ad campaigns are basically the CRM and ERP line of products geared towards business application users. The products are
Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Customer Relationship Management
Microsoft Dynamics GP - Formerly known as Great Plains
Microsoft Dynamics AX - Formerly known as Axapta
Microosft Dynamics NAV - Formerly known as Navision
Microsoft Dynamics SL - Formerly known as Solomon

On an interesting note, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the only product built in-house by Microsoft. (The others were brought on board via acquisitions) In fact, MS CRM is supposed to be the first purely .NET application.

Having been in the CRM world for 10+ years and seeing multitude of vendors come & go, its been interesting to see the growth of MS Dynamics CRM. It was announced in late 2001 and finally came out in 2002. Now in its 7th years, the product is called as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Microsoft never breaks out revenue numbers by the product lines but one of the things that they do is publicly announce the CRM numbers (customers, users) at the Convergence sessions. I have been keeping track of the MS CRM numbers each time they are publicly announced and have kept a running spreadsheet to see how they do each year. Without further ado, here it is..



So basically,
March 2007
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers - 10,000
Microsoft Dynamics CRM users - 600,000

March 2008
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers - 14,000
Microsoft Dynamics CRM users - 400,000

March 2009
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers - 18,000
Microsoft Dynamics CRM users - 800,000

What's been impressive is that Y/Y growtn on the number of CRM users haas grown at the same level (~50%). This taking into account that b/w March 2008 - March 2009 is some of the worst economic slowdown we have seen has been impressive. Another vendor in the CRM space who has shined is our old ticker 'CRM' aka Salesforce.com which just crossed $1BN in revenue.

As I compare these numbers with other CRM vendors I know of (no names mentioned since some of them are former employers of mine :) which have been downward trending, its just a matter of time before Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com will be the only 2 shining stars in the CRM market.

Happy New Year & Bernie Madoff

First of all, Happy New Year to all my readers. Not sure if there are any but still a very happy new year.

Most of you now are aware of the infamous Bernie Madoff scandal that was on the news last month. Ran into this document yesterday which was pretty good reading.

The Worlds Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud

Apparently, the author of this document (who is anonymous and a derivatives expert) submitted this to the SEC in 1999 and then in 2005 again. In this he brought to attention the fact that Madoff fund a Ponzi scheme and also brought to attention several red flags in the document which basically surmized it was impossible to achieve the returns that was being generated by BM (Bernie Madoff) in a legitimate way.

Its almost sad that the SEC who is supposed to be a watchdog just let this slip thru their cracks or maybe just a case of too scared to go after the big doc.

Either way, its good reading (for those of you who like finance).

US Electon Primer 2008

With the election less than 6 weeks away, looks like things are getting headed up.

If you're like me, probably pretty confused about the whole election process (electoral college vs popular vote). Even though I have lived here for 14+ years, never really took the time to understand the whole process.

My canadian friend Sheldon Fernandez has an useful/humorous slant on the election. Here's the 2008 Election Primer from his perspective.

An interesting/fun-filled read.

Enjoy.

Ping.fm - Ping it Like its hot (Beta code)

Now that I have signed up and getting hooked into these social networks (both personal & professional networks) and web 2.0 services like twitter, brightkite, facebook, linkedin, plaxo, tumblr, friendfeed, pownce etc etc - you get the idea, the list is endless, was thinking there needs to be an easy way to manage and post to different sites without having to individually go to these places.

Sure enough, there is and its ping.fm. Thanks to one of my cyber buddies for sending me a beta code and I got signed up. If you want to sign-up, their beta code is 'pingitlikeitshot'

I used to be pretty anti-social networks. So why am I on all these sites? Not sure myself. Part of me is just intrigued by all these developments taking place and another part of me is constantly thinking of the next big thing and how to make it happen :)

Tethering & watching live cricket.. got to love it..

We are at the airport waiting for our flight to Negril. Am tethering over my phone streaming the Ind vs Pak cricket match.
technology.. gotta love it..

Twitter for international text messaging (SMS)

International text messaging - Twitter to the rescue

For those who dont know what twitter is, it is basically a microblogging service over SMS (text messages). Check out Wikipedia explanation or better yet try it out Twitter or even see my Twitter page

So I started exploring/playing around with twitter late last year.

Now although text messaging aka SMS is not that big in the US (it is slowly picking up), it is really popular in Europe, Asia etc. So now, I have never been able to text my brother in India from Sprint PCS. Dont understand quite why but Sprint only allows sending SMS to select carriers in India. Here's the
list of international carriers that Sprint allows international text messaging for. Now, if you notice Bharti Airtel is not in that list for India and they have like a 50%+ marketshare. Anyways to cut a long story short, I have never been able to text my brother in India and vice-versa.

Twitter comes to the rescue?
When I was in India last month, I got my brother connected to twitter and now by sending a SMS to a US number (40404), I can send my brother a tweet (twitter lingo for a SMS) as a direct message which he receives a text (Note - direct messages are only send to the recipient) and he can do the same.

So its pretty cool as now we get to SMS/text each other all thanks to twitter.

Long time no post.. Pandora vs Last.fm

Havent posted in a long time.. I guess, thats what happens in the blogging world.. you start a blog and are all enthusiastic about and slowly get distracted/busy in other items.. well this time, I just need to make a better effort.

Ok now so i've been playing around with these social music services (namely last.fm and Pandora). Both of these offer a similar but differing music experiences. Pandora is more computerized/algorithmic whereas last.fm is all about user recommendation.

Here's an excellent comparison of these services by Steve Krause.

Right now, I just like to pop up either one of these and listen to similar artists and both have worked for me so far. Below are links to my pandora and last.fm pages

Pandora
Last.fm

Take a listen and let me know what you think. If any of you are on these services, link up to me.