Played with an iPhone. Sexy, very sexy. Just not $600 + $60/month sexy. If anything it shows consumers what is possible in mobile user interface. If Apple can bring down the price, unlock the phone, add some decent Wi-Fi VOIP: then I'll seriously consider one.

OK - bad news people. The numbers have come in. Some guy with 12 evals on an Axapta session has beaten me for the top Business Solutions session. If you went to my Offline SDK session on Friday: I need you to submit an eval (preferably positive). I get nothing out of it (not in my goals etc) - but bragging rights on my other team members :)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

At last TechReady is over. After presenting four sessions (300 + 400 level) it made for an exhausting week. At last count I had the top rating session for the divison (not a bad effort). Got to happy about that...

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

If you are a member of the Microsoft Field organization and in town for TechReady - please come by my session tomorrow (Friday) at 1:00pm. The session code is MSDYCT302. It is an 'unscripted chalk talk' - so we can use the time to discuss any Titan technical details that interest you. I'll have a recent Titan build with me so we can demo pretty much any feature for you.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

I've been doing a lot of demo preps lately for a internal technical readiness conference. Frequently I was encountering 'clipboard failure' - whereby the clipboard would no longer cut and paste. Needless to say that when the clipboard stops working it is incredibly frustrating. This blogpost from Terminal Services Team blog has some possible solutions.

I joined Facebook this morning. I received an invite from a friend of mine and decided to finally join. I've been an ardent LinkedIn fan for some time now so I thought Facebook would be more of the same. LinkedIn is a professional networking site which I use as a self updating contact database (I can't wait for the LinkedIn APIs - so I can build some Microsoft CRM integration).

So I signed up to Facebook and accepted the invite from my friend. I decided to spend five minutes clicking around see what all this Facebook stuff was about. I know we recently announced some kind of API partnership and that Bill Gates, Ray Ozzie, Steven Sinofsky etc all have Facebook accounts. If we do business with them and our super senior execs are into it: surely it must be interesting. That's not what I found. What I found was scary. Within a handful of random clicks (I'm an infamous random clicker) I was presented with a list of married colleagues who are looking for casual sex. Yes: that's right. No search terms. No bugs. No accidents. It was like stumbling into the Craiglist personals with everyone’s real names published.

I discussed my experience with one of my ‘hipper’/’younger’ colleagues and he confirmed my worse fears. Yes, married means married. Yes, ‘random play’ means casual sex. Yes, ‘random play’ is a high level taxonomy description. I’m not against swinging. I’m not against casual sex. However I just don’t need to know about it. It conjures up images of ugly fat people and a bowl full of car keys. If you are married and want casual sex: it’s just sleazy. I certainly don’t need to know about in a work context. Now I’m sure that some of these people are just fooling around (in the humorous sense) with their profile. I’ll never look at those people the same way again.

Thanks Facebook. You suck. I hate you.

Ex Microsoftie Alex Barnett continues the PaaS/SaaS discussion on his blog. As Alex hints at - I'll be sharing more of my thoughts regarding the SaaS developer ecosystem in the comming months. There have been some 'big ideas' I've been thinking about during the Titan project which I'm keen to share and start a discussion.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

Here is a great example strong leadership in IT: KLM profiled in Business Week. It's great to see a strategy based on trusting employees instead of fear based 'lowest common denominator' strategies employed by many CIOs.

In three years since I have been earning US dollars - the fracking currency has gone from 0.70 USD for 1.00 AUD to the current price of 0.87 USD to 1.00 AUD. See this chart. For example if I had a 1000 USD three years ago it would be equal to 1428 AUD. Today that 1000 USD is only 1149 AUD. Considering 'real' inflation in both US and Australia is about the same - this means that my 'deal' in the US has got considerably worse.

What frustrates me is that the USD to AUD situation is not unique. It is not the AUD which is super strong it is the USD which is insanely weak. However there is next to no press in the US that their currency has turned to dog sh*t.

This currency weakness certainly places pressure on guest workers like myself. We will start looking for more profitable geographies to live and work. One can only hope that the lack of faith which the world has placed in the USD is related to the currency political crisis in the US. That crisis will naturally resolve itself next year (unless they cancel the election - which would probably cause the USD to completely 'tank').

Astute readers will know I was at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC) last week. Our marketing team announced the pricing for CRM Live - which generated a barrage of press. I enjoyed the speculation about our final feature set for Titan. Needless to say the marketing people will be announcing what's in/out of Titan in due course. I have to say: I'm enjoying our marketing team's approach here. It feels less like Microsoft (ie. vomit out all information at the wrong time) and more like Apple (ie. say things at the right time).

I really like the evolutionary approach to our SaaS strategy. Some vendors have the 'heads in the sand' and refuse to talk services seriously (with no offering or a token offering). Other vendors only offer SaaS and trash talk those who aren't pure services players. There is no question that our industry is moving towards services and Microsoft's CRM has a strategy which is sensitive towards these industry changes. As we announced: we are using our Titan Project to create a Microsoft Hosted version, a Partner Hosted version and an On-Premise version. I use the term 'version' loosely as the final number of SKUs is up to marketing. I believe we are entering an time in the industry when customers will start moving away from self hosting 'non-unique' business functions. Anything which can be achieved by configuring on the shelf apps (like Microsoft CRM) will eventually move to hosted services (if I knew exactly when 'eventually' was I'd be a rich man). Our strategy understands that customers and partners will find themselves in varying degrees along the on-premise to hosted spectrum. Some will want everything 'in the cloud' and others will want everyone their own datacenters. Some might want to prototype in the cloud and move to on-premise etc etc. I believe vendors need to interpret these changing times appropriately for their business.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

Soon (can't say exactly when) I'll be starting to blog about Titan features. For the next six months I'm going to focus my community efforts in four places: Formal CTP activities (private newsgroups, web chats, conference calls), screencasts (something new for me), face to face partner meetings and my own personal blog. Once marketing gives the go-ahead you can expect to see boatloads of Titan content on this blog. I'll be focusing primarily on features which are targeted at VARs & ISVs - but I'll make sure to throw in some end user features.

More importantly is what I won't be doing. I probably won't be doing a lot of travelling in the next six months. So don't expect to see me at conferences/meetings outside Seattle. I won't be posting on the team blog (I'm leaving that to others while I focus on my own). I'll be prioritizing the private Ascend/CTP newsgroups over the public ones (that is already happening) and I'll have a natural preference to meet with partners vs customers.

These are of course my own personal plans and don't represent the goals/priorities of the team as a whole.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

Frank informs us that TechEd Australia has only 200 places left. Our team's very own Ed Martinez will be there doing a handful (3?) CRM sessions. I believe he may even be showing recent builds of Titan (caveat: I'm not 100% sure on that).

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

I'm back in Seattle now. If you are a WWPC attendee and you'd like to connect with a CRM team member you can still email me and I'll try and connect you with team members who are still in Denver.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

I want one: Microsoft's new phone. Remember when programming the O Phone you need to the radius and circumference instead of the height and width!

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

I'm here at WWPC. If you want to meet up - I'm outside the Conference Store if you want to find me. Email me and we can swap cell numbers.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm