The new Office 365 product offering, due to launch in 2011, combines Microsoft Exchange Online, Sharepoint, Live Meeting and Lync (formerly Office Communicator) with Office web apps and licensing for the familiar Microsoft Office Desktop software.

Microsoft Office 365 public beta space is limited, however customers wanting to get up and running as soon as possible with Microsoft Online Services can sign up to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) right away. Once Office 365 launches, BPOS customers will be able to transition across to Office 365.

Bookmark It

Cloud computing frees companies from the burden of traditional IT systems, making it much easier for businesses of all sizes to benefit from the latest technologies and applications.

Traditional IT systems usually require significant investment in server infrastructure, software, storage and staff. Cloud applications run in shared data centres, managed and maintained by experts. Cloud software is provided by companies such as Microsoft and can be activated in minutes or hours rather than the lengthy software and hardware purchase, development and testing cycles usually associated with traditional applications.

The idea of storing data and running software in a data centre miles away is not entirely new – users of online mail services such as Hotmail and Gmail have been doing this for years. The difference is that now, industry leaders such as Microsoft and Amazon are investing heavily to build new data centres with the capacity to host many more applications (CRM, business collaboration software, HR applications) than was previously possible. This means that businesses of all sizes can now choose to run their software applications in the cloud, removing the worry of managing and maintaining servers onsite whilst allowing access to the latest software versions.

Alongside the lower costs and shorter setup times associated with cloud computing, businesses can also benefit from much greater flexibility. The cloud’s subscription-based model allows customers to increase capacity or add additional users as required. In the past this simply was not possible – businesses had to decide when purchasing a server, for example, to allow additional capacity for future expansion. With cloud computing this is not necessary; customers pay only for what they use.

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite

The Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is a set of Microsoft hosted messaging and collaboration solutions including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management.

The full suite is available to UK customers with pricing starting from just £6.71/user per month.

To learn more or to get started with a free 30-day BPOS trial visit http://www.thebposbusiness.com

Microsoft Dynamics CRM – hosted

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is highly customisable customer relationship management system which integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and other business systems, providing valuable insight to aid businesses in nurturing existing client relationships and forging new ones.   Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available to UK customers as an online hosted solution from The CRM Business. 

Hosted CRM pricing starts at just £37.50/user per month.

To learn more or to get started with a free 30-day Microsoft CRM trial visit http://www.thecrmbusiness.com

Bookmark It

As well as talking through why The CRM Business became involved with BPOS, Roger also explained how integrated CRM / BPOS solutions can deliver big benefits for customers.

A full recording of the webinar is now available on the Microsoft Online Services team blog.

We’d love to hear from you if you have any comments or questions.

Contact us via phone / e-mail or follow us on Twitter.

Bookmark It

Before we get too excited about what’s coming up in the New Year, we thought it would be nice to look back on all that has happened in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM world in 2009 – it’s certainly been a busy year!

6 January 2009 – Enterprise Search accelerator was released, allowing Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search their CRM data directly from Sharepoint

8 February 2009 – Microsoft released update rollup 2 for Dynamics CRM 4.0

2 March 2009 – Microsoft Online Services Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) launched to the UK market, delivering competitively priced communication and collaboration tools (Exchange, Communicator, Sharepoint and LiveMeeting) as a subscription service.

5 March 2009 – The Business Productivity Newsfeed accelerator for CRM 4.0 was released on Codeplex, allowing dashboard reports to be generated to allow users to see at a glance summaries of recent activity in their CRM systems

12 March 2009 – Microsoft released update rollup 3 for Dynamics CRM 4.0

10-13 March 2009 – Microsoft Convergence conference took place in Louisiana, United States. It was reported that the number of CRM users worldwide exceeded 900000, from 18000 organisations

19 March 2009 – Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8

27 April 2009 – Business Productivity Workflow Tools accelerator launched for CRM 4.0, providing additional workflow capabilities around string handling, mathematical functions and HTML hyperlink creation

28 April 2009 – Following successful trials in the UK, Microsoft released the full Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) to UK customers.

7 May 2009 – Microsoft released update rollup 4 for Dynamics CRM 4.0

16 May 2009 – Business Data Auditing accelerator was released, providing basic auditing to allow organisations to see when their CRM records have been created, updated, assigned or deleted.

4 June 2009 – Microsoft and Intel announced that CRM 4.0 had been successfully scaled to over 50000 users with sub-second response times

2 July 2009 – Microsoft released update rollup 5 for Dynamics CRM 4.0

8 July 2009 – Microsoft released Mobile Express for Dynamics CRM 4.0, adding Mobile access to the platform

13 July 2009 – Microsoft announced at Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 that Dynamics CRM had passed the 1 million user mark. New sales and marketing programs for xRM were also announced

August 2009 – Further information began to become available about Microsoft’s eagerly anticipated social networking accelerator to allow data from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to be analysed and updated from within CRM. Microsoft also published a white paper, “CRM and Social Networking : Engaging the Social Customer” to help businesses to understand how social networking might benefit them

26 August 2009 – Microsoft released update rollup 6 for Dynamics CRM 4.0. Mobile Express was also distributed as part of this update

4 September 2009 – The CRM Business published a new case study highlighting a new solution integrating the new Microsoft Online Services Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) with Dynamics CRM. This innovative solution combined the power of Dynamics CRM with cutting-edge collaboration tools, shared workspaces, mobile functionality, instant messaging and audio/video web conferencing.

8 October 2009 – Microsoft announced several leading global enterprises that had selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM as their solution of choice, including Barclays Bank Plc, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc, the City of London, Hard Rock International Inc, Maccabi Healthcare Services, Polaris Industries Inc and Vodafone Iceland.

13 October 2009 – Portal Integration and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) accelerators for CRM 4.0 became available on Codeplex

19 October 2009 – Social Networking Accelerator for CRM was released allowing Twitter integration – other social networks including Facebook and LinkedIn are to be added in the future.

22 October 2009 – Microsoft launched the new Windows 7 operating system in the UK. By the time that Windows 7 launched, all Microsoft Dynamics products were certified to run on both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

27 October 2009 – Microsoft announced at Convergence 2009 Europe that CRM Online will be coming to the UK in the second half of 2010

3 November 2009 – Microsoft announced a pricing update for the Business Productivity Online Suite, reducing the full subscription for the standard suite (Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Live Meeting and Communicator) from £10.03/month to just £6.71/month per user

5 November 2009 – Microsoft released update rollup 7 for Dynamics CRM 4.0, delivering significant performance improvements for the Outlook CRM client and improving customer experience.

It has certainly been an exciting year! If you know of something which we might have missed from the above listing, please let us know so that we can include it.

Bookmark It

The full suite comprising Exchange, Sharepoint, Live Meeting and Communicator is now priced from just £6.71 per user per month.

Full details are available on our dedicated BPOS website.

Bookmark It

For executives at The CRM Business, a U.K.-based Software plus Services provider, the drive among current and prospective clients to lower costs, increase flexibility, and operate more efficiently was creating both opportunities and challenges. The CRM Business has long helped its clients meet their business requirements through solutions built around Dynamics CRM, and company executives could see the opportunity to help clients operate more efficiently and effectively by extending those solutions with the integrated messaging and collaboration services provided by the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

Download the full 6-page case study: The CRM Business creates integrated solutions using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)

Bookmark It