As Kirill continued this morning, he mentioned that the ecosystem is increasingly becoming much more than the structured relationships that we have today with our suppliers, customers, and vendors. Today there are new and existing ways that the term “ecosystem” is being used. For instance, in the cloud—with an S+S strategy that tailors to the way that our customers want to work today. Connecting to a wealth of services from your ERP system that help you extend your investment that you’ve made—for Payments, Commerce, and other customer interaction—all important investment areas for the company. Or it may mean having a partner host your ERP system for you, and cutting down on the investments you have to make from an IT perspective. Either way, this “power of choice” is a theme that is important for us at Microsoft that you’ll continue to hear about from us going forward.
Another completeness of the ecosystem is the ability to leverage the investments you’ve made in your Microsoft environment—whether it’s unified communications, collaboration within SharePoint, or publishing reports that can be shared across the team right from your ERP screen. Again, the R&D that Microsoft spends to ensure that our customers get the advantage
One last component of the Ecosystem that is near and dear to our heart that Kirill brought out in his speech was the component around communities. There’s a wealth of information out on the Dynamics Community sites, whether it’s this humble blog or any of the other forums on technical product issues, and through the CustomerSource portal there’s a tremendous amount of information that can help you make the most of your Dynamics ERP purchase.
All in all a great launch to an exciting 2 weeks. More later from the break-out sessions!