xRM+ v1.0
Konafornia LLC (Stanley
He)
As an answer to Salesforce.com CRM’s cloud story, Microsoft enriched its Dynamics CRM 2010 offers a long list of new or updated features such as social-network integration and cross-browser support. On the cloud side Microsoft did it even further: offering 3 choices for CRM user – namely cloud based online version, partner hosted and private hosted. On top of that, Microsoft redesign/rewrite the CRM as a super platform for broader users and business purposes called “xRM”, make it a perfect platform for other needs such as LOB app or even ERP.
Konafornia LLC has been working extensively on Dynamics CRM since 2006 starting with its version 3.0, then 4.0, and now we primarily working on Dynamics CRM 2011 both Online version and on-promise., for clients such as:
· Microsoft: Internal Billing Project for MSIT AgileLab (2008/09).
·
Microsoft: Office team BPOS to Office365 Transition Project (2011).
We are riding on the Dynamics CRM/xRM wave, and very excited to release our product “Konafornia xRM+”, hopefully our product will further en-power CRM developers and end users with the ability to enter new territories and strengthens the existing ones in the same time with the same team.
This “xRM+” products actually includes 3 sub components (products):
1. Dynamics CRM to JMS (ActiveMQ) and NoSQL (MongoDB) bridge.
2. Dynamics CRM Online AppFabric to JMS (ActiveMQ) and NoSQL (MongoDB) bridge.
3. Core xRM+ Server (our core ESB)
Other than Windows .NET 4, everything in xRM+ is based on open-source / FREE frameworks such as Apache ActiveMQ as JMS Server. This “open-source-based” made it possible for xRM+ to be:
· Super in performance and scalability and super low in overall licensing cost.
· If JMS hosted in private cloud, the messaging cost (such as Azure AppFabric) is also gone.
· Can be easily deployed in any local Windows box (64bits Windows 7 or 2008)
· Can be easily deployed in Windows Azure Cloud as VM Role. Or other Windows clouds such as Amazon EC2 and GoGrid.)
· Since the widely accepted Apache ActiveMQ JMS is utilized as the central hub, it would be very simple for other LOB apps to integrate into it – including from Java side apps, .NET apps and any SaaS offers, including but not limited to SOAP and REST
· Further development could be either .NET or Java or Native code, or mixed. With the free client library from Apache.
Here is a
list of our key features:
1. Setting breakpoint to debug server-side logic, it is impossible for both Salesforce and Dynamics CRM Online, looking at logs is the only way to debug, … welcome back to the past! But for local Dynamics CRM, you could use Visual Studio to breakpoint based interactive debugging. From Developer/consultant side, XRM+ make it possible to do business process design, or software development, or QA, or Build all against live/real-time production data, but also do real debugging, thus could greatly increase productivity.
YouTube DEMO video, showing our "xRM+" is used to debug cloud based Dynamics CRM app:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-pYy1wHoJM
2. Live/Real-time backup of CRM into local CRM, more than just SSIS/ETL for hourly or daily, we do “live backup” meaning every single Create/Update/Delete/Associate we apply the change to backup CRM instance at exactly the same time.
3. “Sensitive Data” - to hide/encrypt most sensitive customer/production data from backup instance into “password mode”, but the rest data such as Label and OptionSet values the readable to human eyes, most important keeping the Relationship the same across all CRM Instances for process/ admin/ dev/ qa/ build.
Source Org with sensitive data:
Destination org with partial encrypted:
4. Partial Sync and Data Ownership.
We did a very simple (to be lean) classification of data in each CRM/xRM org to 3 buckets. And then, it be seeded into “Konafornia xRM+ Pack” for processing or untouchable.
· Certain Org is the primary owner of certain Entities, meaning they
o own Create/Update/Delete/Associate locally, and they also
o broadcast their updates if any.
· Co-owner of certain shared Entities, meaning they have the
o right to CRUD locally, they
o do not have right to broadcast, they
o will be overwritten by primary owner from external source.
· Isolated Entities, own CRUD locally 100%; on the other hand, neither broadcast changes not accept changes from external.
5. “Cloud Group” or ERP and Multi-org and Scale up
xRM provided the possibility for running multiple LOB apps in the same org or different orgs, it could be deployed all or just partially in cloud, depend on customer’s need and preference. With the help of Konafornia xRM+, it is possible for all different Orgs to be connected and synced in realtime, thus each has their ownership of the Instance and in the meantime the freedom to sync into a “Cloud Group”. Similar to ESBs such as BizTalk, in our future release - each individual “Cloud Node” could be Dynamics CRM Online or others – Salesforce, SharePoint Online, GoogleDoc, etc.
6. “Konafornia xRM+ Pack” or just call it “KxP”. Similar to “management Pack” for SCOM, but much simpler.
7. Appendix:
Demo video link: