Microsoft Application Framework – CRM, NAV, AX, GP

Microsoft CRM is built upon a platform that allows for an ever increasing level of customisation and extension. Microsoft is providing this platform packaged as a CRM system and we now have the term XRM which is devised to break Microsoft CRM down to this core platform and then build something up from it. It’s this platform for rapid application development that would be ideally shipped as a framework of some sort that allows for custom systems building and also with the ability to install add ons such as CRM, NAV, GP, etc… 

Name it the Microsoft Application Framework or Dynamics Application Framework (DAF, ok maybe not the best acronym) but integrated with Visual Studio, SQL Server, SharePoint and the various other Microsoft technolgies. Imagine the ease of integrating CRM with NAV if both systems existed within the same framework.

Obviously Microsoft is building up and investing alot of effort into this feature rich application framework, namely Microsoft CRM and its underlying platform, and only time will tell if the true  potential of this technology mix will be achieved. We could maybe take and alter a statement from HomerSimpson by saying “The Microsoft Application Framework, is there anything it can’t do!”, and although this doesn’t actually exist just yet, I hope it will.