Scribe Software Takes Dynamics CRM Integration to the Cloud

Scribe Software, a data integration provider with a special focus on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, this week launched a cloud-based platform for integrating CRM and ERP data with other business applications.

The 60-employee, Bedford, N.H.-based ISV made the announcement during Microsoft Convergence in Atlanta, where Scribe also saw eight of its customers and partners win Microsoft Dynamics customer excellence awards.

The new Scribe Online Services platform is a cloud-based version of the Scribe Insight integration platform, for which the company has about 800 partners and 10,000 customers.

Insight is a traditional server-based transformation engine inside the corporate firewall. Partners use a workbench and console to map data from source to target and transform, massage and orchestrate the data, says Betsy Bilhorn, vice president of market and product management at Scribe, which has produced a number of adapters for Microsoft and other vendors' ERP and CRM products.

"Scribe Online is a cloud-based product, so the only thing that would potentially be on the client side is the agent," Bilhorn said. The cloud framework also opens some new use scenarios, according to Scribe. "It extends a platform framework for people to be able to package and deploy integration services, which is not easy to do with an on-premise product and is not easy to do with Insight," Bilhorn said. "The other thing is there are collaborative features for partners and customers to work together" on data integration.

In keeping with Scribe's Dynamics CRM-first approach, the first service for Scribe Online is the Scribe Replication Services for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. A five-click setup allows users to replicate Dynamics CRM data for backup, compliance, operational reporting and business intelligence analysis.

About 85 percent of Scribe resellers focus on Dynamics CRM, Bilhorn said.

One of those resellers is Customer Effective, a Greenville, S.C.-based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that was a 2010 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award Finalist for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Customer Effective uses Scribe's integration platform in about 95 percent of its deals, said Mike Rogers, vice president of business development and marketing with the company.

"We're really excited about the Scribe Online Services and being able to leverage it as a tool with our CRM customers," Rogers said.

He said the Scribe Online platform will also help because it comes as Microsoft is pushing hard to drive adoption of Dynamics CRM Online. "We've seen a transformation, and we're going to see a flip-flop -- a lot more customers will deploy online and a lot less will deploy on-prem," Rogers said. He said that two years ago, the ratio of on-premise CRM to online CRM was about 75-25. "Now it's 50-50, and I see that being 25-75 two years from now."

Posted by Scott Bekker on April 13, 2011