What the Common Data Model needs for Microsoft Dynamics 365 to succeed

Later this year the world will get to know Microsoft Dynamics 365. A cloud platform that will not only unite CRM with ERP but also promises a whole bunch of connecting technologies to support the fluent use of various different apps - from Microsoft as well as other providers. In fact, they're now calling it the Microsoft Business Application Platform. Here's what the big picture looks like:

Many of these are existing products that have either been generally available for quite some time (Power BI) and others have been running in preview mode, like Microsoft Flow and PowerApps. From a Microsoft Dynamics CRM perspective, the most interesting technology is sitting down at the bottom of the stack: the Microsoft Common Data Model (CDM).

Why is CDM so important for us? I'll let Jujhar Singh, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, tell you the reason. This is what Jujhar has to say about CDM in his blog post on the Dynamics 365 announcement:

"The common data model is a cloud-resident business database, built on years of experience with our enterprise customers. It will come with hundreds of standard business entities spanning both business process (Dynamics 365) and productivity (Office 365). The standardization and consistency of schema enables partners to build innovative applications and to automate business processes spanning the entire business process spectrum with confidence their solutions can be easily deployed and used across Microsoft’s entire customer base."

The first preview version of the Common Data Model was released a few weeks ago. If you want to see it in action, look no further than this video from CRM MVP Scott Durow where he walks you through the creation of a CDM database and the connection to CRM via Flow:

Looks neat, doesn't it? Unfortunately it's not quite enough for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM or ERP customer to get excited about yet. We're going to need a lot more to address the real world scenarios where business data needs to seamlessly "flow" from one system to another while preserving the business process context. Also, the preconfigured data model in CDM today isn't necessarily a dream come true for Dynamics CRM professionals.

To find out more details about these potential issues, read my blog post "CDM: New Data Model For The Common Good?"