CRM 2011 for On-Premises released today

It is finally here! Check the news release, featuring Mark Barrett, Sr. VP at Avanade.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Released for On-Premises and Partner-Hosted Deployments


Also, the RTM version of the SDK is available as well as the implementation guide:

Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK).

WF4 in CRM

I just came accross this Channel9 video that was recorded a while ago, regarding the usage of WF4 in CRM and what it means for the customer that CRM workflow is upgraded from WF3.5 to WF4 (.Net4).

Even though I appear on the video, I had never seen it before! You also have Steven Kaplan and Nirav Shah from Microsoft discussing the introduction of WF4 in CRM, what the advanatages are and what challenges we had in the process.

CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit released

Microsoft announced the release of the Dynamics CRM 2011 Training Kit. It seems to be a perfect training material for those developers who are familiar with CRM 4.0 and want to learn what is new in CRM 2011. It contains PowerPoint presentations, videos and hands-on labs which cover in a concise manner most of the new features in CRM 2011.

Unfortunately the videos and demos have very low resolution and are thus a bit hard to follow but the material is great and I really enjoy the brief and to-the-point style of the content!

Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit

CRM Online and Canadian Privacy Law

CRM Online is usually my preferred CRM deployment for most projects; but recently I have encountered a number of legal barriers due to the geographical location of the Microsoft data centers. For cloud deployments of Dynamics CRM in North America, the data is physically hosted in USA which triggers a long discussion with legal departments with our customers.

For our Canadian customers, we are bound to comply with the Canada Privacy Law (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/P-21/index.html) which clearly prohibits the export of sensitive or government data. Furthermore, The Patriot Act in the USA poses additional threats to Canadian privacy law:

The Act permits U.S. law enforcement officials, for the purpose of an anti-terrorism investigation, to seek a court order that allows access to the personal records of any person without that person’s knowledge (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/gospubs/TBM_128/usapa/faq-eng.asp#Q1)

We must be very diligently evaluating the kind of Data that would be hosted in a CRM Online organization and where this data is to physycally reside. I wouldn't imagine Microsoft opening data centers in every country but I also imagine this to be a very common problem. It would be interesting to know what strategy does Microsoft envision or offer to deal with this kind of restrictions (if any).

Welcome to my blog

It has been years that I have anticipated my personal blog. However, I got distracted with other projects and ended up contributing to somebody else's blogs instead of maintaining my own.

I have now committed myself to create a CRM blog where I can share experiences and tips with the CRM community worldwide. Please note that this is a personal blog and does not necessarily reflect my employer's (Avanade) perspective on CRM.

I am also looking forward to suscribe to various feeds and stay very active and updated on CRM news as well as other Microsoft technologies that I have interest on (Sharepoint, Dynamics, virtualization, etc).