Microsoft Dynamics CRM – By the numbers (April 2011 update)

It’s time for the annual ‘customary’ post regarding the Microsoft Dynamics CRM ecosystem and the current numbers as it stands. As I mentioned last year with the emergence of twitter, foursquare check-in etc, I just don’t find the mindset to actually sit down & write a blog post.

So came back last week from attending yet another Microsoft Convergence. The venue was same as last year (Atlanta). So I have been keeping track of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM numbers over time for the last 6+ years. So with the latest updates here you go

• 1.7 Million users
• 27,000 customers

Below image shows the numbers over time.



Of course 2011 was the launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (#CRM2011) with both the hosted (CRM Online) and on-premise offering available now.

If you look at the customer count growth, it seems similar to last year (~23%) but the number of users has grown at a bigger rate (55% vs 23% last year). This may be due to Microsoft getting into bigger CRM deals (esp with the launch of CRM 2011). If you notice the average users/customer is now around 63 whereas in the past it has been around the 50 users/customer mark.

One thing I would love for Microsoft is to break out the customer and user count between on-premise and CRM Online. This is something Microsoft has never officially done. My personal guess is that on-premise still accounts for the majority of this and thus the reason for breaking it down. As Microsoft’s cloud story gets more traction, I think it’ll just be a matter of time before Microsoft has to show this breakdown. (Am sure the analysts will be asking for this).

Some of the talked about topics heard this year (was similar to last year)

• Social CRM (A lot of discussion around this topic and seemed to be even more popular than past year. The new hashtag for this appears to be #scrm)
  
  
• CRM Online (or Hosted CRM) ( I think the cloud story is just going to get stronger and stronger. But at the same time there are still use cases for those wanting on-premise software )
  
  
• 40,000 trials of CRM Online to date. (It’ll be interesting to see the conversion rate from trial to customer)

One of the topics that I surprisingly didn’t hear a lot about was the whole XRM (CRM as a Development Platform). It appeared there was more discussion around this last year opposed to this year. With the launch of CRM 2011, it seems like the perfect platform to push this message stronger but was somehow missing at Convergence.

Other than that, it was a great conference. It’s always nice to connect/reconnect with people in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. There is definitely something to be said about face-face interactions.

Till next time.