Today we welcome guest blogger Jim Steger, developer, blogger, and writer for Sonoma Partners with this report from PDC ‘09.
On the last day of PDC09, I had the opportunity to present a brief demo of our internal socialization application (code name “SideBar”) with Andy Bybee from the CRM Product Team during his Developing xRM Solutions using Windows Azure.
SideBar started as an internal intern project for us this summer. We wanted to explore leveraging Dynamics xRM to create a compelling Enterprise 2.0 application which provides another mechanism for communication throughout our organization, especially our remote user base.
This is achieved through a combination of user updates (similar to Twitter or Facebook) along with derived system data from our CRM application and other external sources, such as our blog and back-end analytics database.
SideBar is built against Microsoft Dynamics xRM platform (of course) and has multiple interface options, including a couple of Web interfaces, xRM forms, and a nice custom WPF application. Further, we now leverage the Azure App Fabric Service Bus to provide updates without the need for VPN access!
In addition to our SideBar demo, Andy provides some additional insight to the features of CRM 5 and how it can be combined with Azure. The session also has some awesome demos from Shan McArthur and Girish Raja. Microsoft posted the presentation and slides at http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/P09-07 (the SideBar demo starts at 47:30).
So take a look and see how you can quickly combine the power of the Dynamics xRM platform with Azure to provide compelling solutions for your users.
Happy coding!