In these days we're really busy to work with Microsoft on a future tour where we'll show the power of the integrations between Microsoft Dynamics and what is called the "Microsoft classic" world.
One of the key point of this future tour is in my opinion what is called OBA, alias Office Business Applications. In order to undertand the potential of OBA, start with this picture:
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OBAs connect Line of Business (LOB) systems with the people that use them through the familiar user interface of Microsoft Office. OBAs enable businesses to extend the Microsoft Office clients and servers into business processes running in LOB applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Supply Chain Management (SCM).
The needs of OBA starts from the clear fact that, despite the introduction of complex systems such as ERP or CRM or other LOB systems, in the offices of a normal industry people loves to work with familiar tools like Word, Excel, Outlook (what is called the Comfort Zone). The first result that you can see is that tons of documents and informations lives on the user's pc!
Office Business Applications have the target to work directly in the user's Comfort Zone, by customizing the Office world in order to satisfy the business needs and helps the user to work better and in an easy manner.
The new Microsoft Office family helps a lot on this direction and Visual Studio is an essentil tool to work with OBA.
What about Microsoft Dynamics? Microsoft Dynamics is ready for OBA and I think that actually is always more important to give OBA services to your users.
Show NAV or CRM data on a Sharepoint site or launch NAV or CRM process from Microsoft Word or Excel via a ribbon button... this is the future to attract more customers I think. Show them the power: this is the brand of our next tour! :)