Microsoft CRM messaging through Lotus Domino email server - balanced solution

Microsoft CRM and IBM Lotus Notes Domino seem to be taking completely different paths and if company is Microsoft oriented - we see MS CRM, MS Exchange, MS SQL Server, SharePoint, etc. In case of Lotus Domino - it is opposite - Lotus is corporate Information Media and could technically play CRM role with internal messaging coming through Lotus Domino server. However realities of modern corporation give us multiple examples when Microsoft CRM and Lotus Domino should coexist in compromise. There are several reasons why corporation doesn't like to stick to one platform: 1.Balancing several platforms not to be trapped to one-vendor solution. Imagine, that you placed all eggs into one basket and then this basket went into trouble (lawsuit, bankruptcy, mismanagement, hostile takeover - to name a few in life of modern American corporation) 2.Legacy-dependence. If your corporation uses such product as Lotus Notes/Domino for 10 plus years - you can expect that majority of documents are stored in Lotus databases. Just conversion of this legacy database is multi-million dollars project. And again - we could not predict future accurately - who will win or lose - IBM or Microsoft - or maybe they will merge

Great Plains Dexterity – Microsoft Great Plains Customization overview

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, former Great Plains Software Dynamics and eEnterprise are Dexterity-written applications. Also small business line: Microsoft Small Business Manager or Small Business Financials is written in Dexterity and uses same code base as Great Plains.

The history of Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity - is proprietary programming language and technology, designed back to earlier 1990th with goal to build platform independent graphical accounting package - Great Plains Dynamics. Dexterity itself is written in C (following popular those days hope - that C will provide platform independence). You can install Dexterity from Great Plains 7.5 CD #2. Obviously it requires a lot of learning / training, but it allows your custom piece be seamlessly integrated with Great Plains interface.

•Native Dexterity Cursors. Dexterity was designed as platform independent programming language and so if you want your code to be operable on all currently supported databases - you use Dexterity ranges and loops to manipulate records •Great Plains Dexterity with SQL Stored Procs Nowadays, most of Great Plains installations are moved to SQL Server - so you can use Dexterity for custom forms drawing only and make buttons run SQL stored procedures. •COM Objects calls. Beginning with version 7.0 Dexterity supports COM objects - you register them as libraries in Dexterity. Refer manual. This technique allows you to call such nice things as web services across internet.