|
For more than a decade, Pivotal CRM has been the choice of Microsoft-centric organizations that want the flexibility to model their specific business practices within their customer relationship management system. CDC Software cooperates closely with Microsoft to ensure Pivotal CRM customers can always take advantage of the latest advances in Microsoft technology. The Pivotal CRM product line leverages the Microsoft technology stack to provide not only usability and productivity advantages through integration to Microsoft Office, but also the reliability, scalability, and ease of integration and deployment required in an enterprise-strength CRM solution.
Microsoft’s latest technology stack is based on Microsoft .NET, which is enjoying widespread adoption within the software development community because it provides a standards-based platform for developing, integrating, and deploying service-oriented applications. Service-oriented applications are built as reusable components that can share the services they provide over the Internet, thus enabling true interoperability among applications written in different programming languages.
CDC Software is moving Pivotal CRM onto the Microsoft .NET framework to allow our customers to realize its benefits, including simplified deployment and ongoing management of Pivotal CRM solutions, more flexible customization capabilities, cost-effective integration, and an enhanced user experience.
Adopting the Microsoft Roadmap
As a Microsoft Global Independent Software Vendor (GISV), CDC Software benefits from a managed relation-ship that spans multiple corporate dimensions, including sales engagements, co-marketing, and technology adop-tion. This distinguishes us in terms of technology access, go-to-market cooperation, and support services from the 7000+ companies that Microsoft defines as “partners.”
CDC Software is a Gold Certified Partner and full participant in Microsoft’s GISV Partner Advisory Council, an invitation-only group of Microsoft’s top 40 global ISVs. As a member of the GISV-PAC, we provide input on Microsoft’s programs and go-to-market strategies.
As a result, we are able to take a proactive approach to supporting Microsoft’s core platform products by participating in beta, pre-release, and early access programs. Wherever possible, we align our Pivotal CRM roadmap with Microsoft’s, allowing our customers to take first-mover advantage of new capabilities in Microsoft’s core platform products and ensuring customers can lever-age and extend their existing infrastructure investments.
Microsoft SQL Server
Pivotal CRM solutions can take advantage of the powerful business intelligence (BI) capabilities in SQL Server 2005, including integration services, analysis services, reporting services, and data mining, allowing businesses to apply complex multi-dimensional analysis capabilities to operational CRM data. Information relevant to each user’s needs can be displayed in portals personalized to each role, improving the customer experience through better access to decision-making data. For example, SQL Server’s BI capabilities make it possible to perform sales forecasting and create executive dashboards that offer key business performance indicators at a glance.
Additionally, because SQL Server 2005 is part of the Windows® Server System™ line of products, Pivotal CRM customers can benefit from reduced total cost of ownership and faster development time when integrating to other Windows Server System products.
With respect to Pivotal CRM and the BI capabilities of SQL Server 2005, CDC Software’s intentions include building out a reporting structure based on Microsoft Reporting Services, which offers a single, server-based point of focus for delivery of both traditional static reports to user desktops and interactive reports via the Internet.
Microsoft Operating Systems
Pivotal CRM is optimized for the Windows platform and utilizes advanced operating system features to improve performance, scalability, manageability, and usability, greatly reducing the effort of deploying Pivotal CRM solu-tions. Additionally, Pivotal CRM solutions take advantage of Windows 2000/2003 Advanced Server Network Load Balancing services to distribute IP traffic across a Pivotal CRM-deployed application cluster of standard, low-cost Intel servers, reducing the cost of implementing an enterprise-strength solution.
Microsoft Internet Information Server
Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is the key infrastructure behind Pivotal CRM’s reliable, manageable, and scalable web-based CRM applications, facilitating synchronization of not only data, but also upgrades and customizations, to all systems within and beyond enterprise boundaries. Pivotal CRM customers deploying a web-based solution can take advantage of Microsoft IIS 6.0’s support of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI)—which includes automated health monitoring, process isolation, and improved management capabilities—to increase application availability while lowering system administration costs.
Microsoft BizTalk Server
Pivotal CRM can leverage Microsoft BizTalk Server to integrate business processes within and between organizations. The Pivotal Integration Connector provides BizTalk-compatible schemas that facilitate developing, executing, managing, and optimizing distributed business processes.
|
