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.