I recently attended the Microsoft Dynamics Fall Analyst Event (FAE) 2012 in Washington state, which started with a tour of a local Microsoft Store (see Part 1 of this blog series, Microsoft Analyst Event Part One: What’s New for Fall 2012). At the company’s Redmond, WA Microsoft headquarters, Kirill Tatarinov, President of the Microsoft Business Solutions Division (MBS), gave us the 2012 year-end review. One major point that he made was that he and the entire MBS department have been promoted into a full-fledged Microsoft division (no longer folded together with SharePoint and Office), and that the division has been recruiting new executives and rank-and-file employees. I take this as a sign of the company’s serious investment in Microsoft Dynamics.

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10Gen and Microsoft have signed an agreement that will enable MongoDB users on Windows Azure to access MongoDB’s latest features and ensure the best possible user experience. For example, newly available is the MongoDB Installer for Windows Azure to automate the deployment process.

MongoDB users will be able to take advantage of features such as triple data replication and tutorials—for example, how to deploy a single standalone MongoDB server to Windows Azure Virtual Machines for Windows 2008 R2 Server and CentOS, which opens the door for Linux users to work within Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.

I recently had the opportunity, during Epicor’s global customer conference, to talk with Chad Meyer, director of product marketing, and he shared with me some of the highlights of Epicor’s vision and strategy for cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP). Read the rest of this entry »