Well, as some of you might have noticed, not much has happened on this blog for the last 3 weeks which has been due to the fact that I’ve been on my honeymoon in Thailand and frankly didn’t start CRM och SharePoint even once :).

I’ve tried to find out a bit more about the upcoming integration engine CRM-Nav from Microsoft but have not been very successful. The main question is what kind of infrastructure it will be based on and I think the following three are the hottest tips:

1. Celenia/Tectura – The integration formerly known as Tectura, (see my previous postings), now called the Celenia CRM-Nav integration, has previously been put forward by Microsoft as THE integration engine to use.

2. BizTalk based integration – BizTalk is the talk of the town concerning integration, and it would not be very strange if the integration would be BizTalk based.

3. New/Custom – They might just have sat down and started from scratch and written an integraiton engine specifically for CRM-Nav.

Well, where’s my money? To start off, Microsoft have been very very quite about this integration engine, would seem a bit strange if the engine would be according to 2 or 3 above, when there really would be no reason for that.

However, if they are up to an aquisition of Celenia or just the program, then they would probably like to be just very very quite about it until all the formalities had been settled.

Another reason for not going along with 2, the BizTalk version, is that it would require an installation of BizTalk at each customer which might cause more problems and costs than what is reasonable.

One reason for not choosing 3 is that it most probably will be quite costly.

Something to take into consideration in the Celenia business is that the integration engine was previously owned by Tectura (although it had been developed by Celenia) but for reasons unknown to me, was reverted to Celenia. Most probably after considerable preasure from Microsoft.

Bottom line, my money is on the Celenia integration (1). Which versions of Nav it will support is still unknown and if it will still only be a technical integration is also still unknown, when I learn more, I will let you know.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se