By Kirill Tatarinov

I had the privilege to keynote this year’s Convergence event in Orlando with Steve Ballmer, Michael Park, and Kevin Schofield. We had nearly 10,000 attendees this year and it is always a pleasure to connect with customers and partners around the Community of Business. This event touches all of us in a very impactful way, and I wanted to send out a quick summary of key announcements and give you a flavor of what Convergence is all about.

The overall theme of this year’s event was Customer Driven Innovation – Delivering the Business Applications of the Future, today through continuous innovation driven by our customers. From a positioning standpoint, there were several key messages that we drove over the course of the week:

• Software – plus – Services
• Role Tailored User Experience
• Foundation for Driving Long-term Value and Growth
• Strengthening and Preserving Our Customers Investments

There were many exciting announcements made this week. We previewed Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, and announced a major expansion of our alliance with EDS where EDS will incorporate Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a key offering in the EDS Global CRM Practice. We showcased integration between Microsoft Dynamics and Windows Essential Business Server 2008, and announced a rich set of services that extend existing Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM applications to the web. We discussed a new set of new migration tools, a combination of software and best-practice services to help companies that have outgrown their QuickBooks software make a “smart move” to Microsoft Dynamics GP. We also highlighted the Feel IT methodology developed in conjunction with the IT University of Copenhagen that uses images rather than words to uncover users’ unfiltered emotional reactions of using Microsoft Dynamics products to create software that people truly love.

It was also great to see a lot of positive press and analyst uptake around this event. Here are just a couple of quotes:
"They see CRM as a market they can target in the enterprise. With every software company, when they started, CRM was a standalone product – with Oracle, with SAP early on, and obviously with Siebel.” "With the new management team in place [at Microsoft], they're really looking at cross-integrations we wouldn't have seen in the past. Five years after all these acquisitions, there's a bigger commitment than I've ever seen." – Ray Wang, Forrester Research quoted in TechTarget

“The real star of the show is a new set of online services designed to extend Dynamics CRM and ERP applications to the Web as online solutions and provide choice to customers.”-Renee Boucher Ferguson, eWeek

 “Although Microsoft sometimes gets dinged in the area of software usability (typically by Apple aficionados), Microsoft's Dynamics division is trying to create software that is not just usable, but desirable….” -Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek

 It was a very exciting week. I had many opportunities to interact directly with our customers and partners on a one-on-one basis, and enjoyed provocative conversations on a wide variety of topics related to our business. As always, your feedback is very helpful and I thank you for providing compelling thoughts and ideas.

I want to thank everyone on the MBS Marketing, Development, AR/PR teams, and crews that have worked so hard to make this happen and deliver the conference on a strong note. Most importantly, I want to thank all of you, our customers and partners, for sharing our vision.

Kirill Tatarinov
Corporate VP
Microsoft Business Solutions