This document provides an overview of the key architectural components of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 including the core CRM components, extended CRM capabilities, deployment in the cloud, and considerations for performance and scalability. It describes Dynamics CRM 2011 as a set of logical components including the server architecture, integration points, and user authentication methods. The reference architecture is intended to help guide deployment and management of Dynamics CRM 2011 instances.

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ference Architec
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3. CONTENTS
1 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... 4
1.1 Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 4
2 Key Architectural Components ...................................................................................................... 5
System Architecture Components ............................................................................................................ 7
Integration ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Authentication .......................................................................................................................................... 8
3 Core CRM Components .................................................................................................................. 9
3.1 Sales Force Automation ................................................................................................................. 9
.
3.2 Customer Care Business Scenarios ............................................................................................... 10
4 Extended CRM ............................................................................................................................ 11
.
Role Based User Experience ................................................................................................................... 12
Business Designer Layer ......................................................................................................................... 12
.
Managing Solutions ................................................................................................................................ 12
5 Dynamics CRM in the Cloud ......................................................................................................... 13
Authentication ........................................................................................................................................ 14
6 Performance and Scalability ........................................................................................................ 15
7 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 16
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4. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers several key capabilities and features that can be leveraged by
organizations across a wide range of industry segments as well as solution providers that are
market leaders within industry verticals they specialize in. These include:
• End‐to‐end CRM functional modules including Sales Force Automation, Customer
Service Automation, and Marketing Automation.
• Integration tools that spans line‐of‐business applications across the enterprise.
• Comprehensive business intelligence and analytics tools for business management and
risk and compliance reporting.
• Centralized store of all information, reports, communications, portfolio, performance in
one easy‐to‐access location.
1.1 Purpose
The purpose of this document is to provide generic architecture guidance for solutions based on
Dynamics CRM 2011. This document describes Dynamics CRM 2011 as a set of architecture
components, presented from the perspective of stakeholders’ architectural concerns. The reference
architecture describes the core platform features, deployment models, and operational processes.
1.2 Audience
The intent of the reference architecture is to help enterprise architects guide the Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 2011 platform architecture discussions with customers, so that Dynamics CRM is deployed in a
consistent manner and to effectively manage those deployments. The model helps to develop
consistency across deployed instances as well. Additionally, the model aids customers with
information on the sourcing choices—on‐premise, hosted by third parties, or hosted in the cloud as
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
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5. 2 KEY ARCHITECTURAL COMPONENTS
Within any organization, software applications, legacy systems and reference data providers are vital
to develop and maintain client information, including planning and reporting for customers. However,
a typical business environment today consists of a wide range of line‐of‐business applications, built
over the past decades, spanning multiple architectures. A typical business user is expected to interact
with them through multiple user experiences to meet their day‐to‐day information needs as well as to
perform key business functions. Because many of these systems are not integrated, users must
perform many business processes manually. Communications, data re‐entry, and duplicative
functionality are further complicated by multiple service delivery channels including call centers,
client internet, mobile devices and workstations to serve the same client. Users pay a high cost
without integrated systems because they waste time working with the disparate systems that could
be better spend providing direct client service and developing business.
Dynamics CRM 2011 is designed with maximum flexibility to enable adoption by enterprises with
varying degrees of flexibility support end‐to‐end CRM capabilities. This architectural flexibility enables
Dynamics CRM 2011 to be deployed in several ways, such as:
• Dynamics CRM 2011 as a traditional CRM application
• Dynamics CRM 2011 as an application framework
• Dynamics CRM 2011 as a Service
In order to leverage these capabilities, solutions need to be designed using an architecture that
reflects the underlying structure imposed by Dynamics CRM 2011. The Dynamics CRM 2011 platform
integrates tightly with the broader Microsoft platform, using Internet Information Services (IIS) as a
front‐end Web server to host Web sites, and SQL Server as the store for site definitions, content type
definitions, published content, and configuration data. Shared service applications hosted as
applications services provide reusable services for the enterprise Web applications. Figure 1 shows
how Dynamics CRM 2011 is logically structured with all major components.
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6.
FIGURE 1
1: Microsoft D
Dynamics CRM
M and the re
est of the Mic
crosoft Techn
nology stack
g elements in Figure 1 above:
Notice the following
Dynammics CRM Serv ver: A Dynamics CRM 2011 1 installation can be composed of one o or more Web b
applications. Each W
Web applicatio
on is a unique
ely addressab ble domain, w with its own set of URLs us
sed
and tra
ansactional da
atastore are a
associated with specific appplications.
ShareP
Point providess the framework for creating and mana
aging collabor
rative Web sit
tes to enable
e
busines
ss users to wo
ork more clos
sely with clien
nts.
SQL Serrver is a data management platform that supports t the rapid deve
elopment of enterprise‐cla ass
businesss application
ns that deliver
rs rich data analysis and d ata‐mining ca
apabilities tha
at integrate w
with
familiar applicationss such as Micr
rosoft Office.
To achi
ieve maximum
m flexibility, s
solution desig
gn should con
nsider:
• Separating f
front end servvices, shared service appli cations, and databases.
• Enabling muulti‐tenancy fo
or tenancy iso
olation
• Removing adherence to hardware res sources to sca
ale as needed d
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7.
System Architectu
ure Compo
onents
The sys
stem application architectuure is describ
bed using the technical cap
pabilities prov
vided by the
platform for develop
ping solutionss. This maps tthe logical ele
ements of a W
Web applicati ion to a typica
al
CRM or r XRM applica
ation. The pla
atform include es many com mponents to b build and expoose Web
applications.
The follow list show
ws some critica
al component
ts:
Servic ns: A service application provides a res ource that ca
ce application an be shared across sites w
within
a farm
m or.
Applic
cation pools:
: In Internet In
nformation Services (IIS) 7
7.0, an applica
ation pool is a
a group of on
ne or
more URLs that are
e served by a worker proc cess or set of wworker proce esses.
Integr
ration with le
egacy system
ms: Legacy systems may be
e integrated w
with the Dyna
amics CRM
platfo
orm by using t
the CRM Web b Services.
User e
experience: UUser experien
nce includes c
common user
r interface ele
ements, branding, styles, a
and
accessibility suppo
ort.
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8. Integration
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offers several programming paradigms designed to provide flexibility
around that works best for specific integration requirements. The integration framework within
Dynamics CRM is built on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) end points that have been
streamlined to provide a set of tools to simplify the development of integrated solutions. This
framework supports Language Integrated Query (LINQ) queries to retrieve data from Microsoft
Dynamics CRM. The REST endpoint for AJAX and Microsoft Silverlight clients provides an alternative
interface that can be leveraged to work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM data. Rather than directly
invoking a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)‐based Web service, requests can be executed using a
service that is based on a URI.
Microsoft Dynamics can also be extend or customized through the integration of custom business
logic called Plug‐ins. A plug‐in is basically custom business logic that can be integrated with Microsoft
Dynamics CRM Online, Dynamics CRM hosted or on‐premises, to modify or augment the standard
behavior of the system. Plug‐ins are implemented as event handlers that are registered to execute in
response to a particular event in the system. Plug‐ins can be defined in any .NET language.
Authentication
User authentication in Dynamics CRM 2011 is based on Windows Identity Foundation that forms the
basis for claims based authentication, allowing a user to present their identity as a set of claims. In
this type of scenario, a Security Token Service actually performs authentication, rather than Dynamics
CRM. This standardization of authentication mechanism allows Dynamics CRM 2011 to become easier
to implement within infrastructures that leverage multiple authentication mechanisms, including
third‐party SAML compliant providers
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9. 3 CORE CRM COMPONENTS
While the economic recession is officially over, many companies are still reeling from its effects. The
downturn has led to a very competitive landscape. This shift has been further fueled by some key
market trends.
• A more discerning consumer with heightened sensitivity to price, value, and service
• Unparalleled consumer access to vendor information
• Erosion of barriers to switching a product or service
Buyers have changed the way they evaluate and purchase, driven by greater access to information,
led by maturing internet technologies. It is not sustainable for a business to compete solely on price.
Dynamics CRM provides a cost effective, easy to deploy platform that improves user adoption,
productivity and the bottom line. The innovations in Dynamics CRM 2011 enable a wide variety of
new capabilities that drive productivity gains including the following:
1. Uncover new connections, both in terms of people and systems
2. Focus on rights leads by more effectively qualifying and routing them
3. Be more effective in their team selling activities
4. Streamline problem resolution with dynamic guided processes and dialogs
5. Attain real‐time insight into the business with flexible dashboards, visualizations and ad‐hoc
reporting features
The platform provides capabilities that address Sales Force Automation and Customer Care Scenarios
for a wide portfolio of organizations across a broad range of industries. Dynamics CRM 2011 is
available in 41 different languages as a multi‐lingual solution that meets the needs of today’s truly
global business environment. The Sales Force Automation and Customer Care functional areas of
Dynamics CRM are highlighted from an architecture standpoint in the sections below.
3.1 Sales Force Automation
Within any organization, sales operations is all about generating revenue. Traditionally, this has been
accomplished by spending more time with customers. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can help sales
organizations reduce busy work and allow them to have more time for customers. The native Outlook
experience that Dynamics CRM provides enables sales users to extend the email, calendaring, contact
management and collaboration capabilities to their sales processes, including prospecting and
opportunity management. A key element of effective selling, and one that is very time‐consuming, is
content creation. Specifically, the creation of quotes, proposals, reference forms, and RFPs can be
tedious. If a sales person has to create any of these documents from scratch, they can easily take
hours if not days. Dynamics CRM 2011 has SharePoint capabilities embedded within the product, so
sales users can easily create, share, and re‐use key documents such as proposals and quotes. More
importantly, the salesperson can take advantage of valuable knowledgeable from other salespersons
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10. who created similar documents, in turn enabling more effective selling. Key business functions of
lead, opportunity, and client and campaign management are addressed as part of the Sales Force
Automation module of Dynamics CRM 2011.
3.2 Customer Care Business Scenarios
As the complexity and number of software products and services increases, organizations strive to
achieve more efficient and collaborative processes. These processes typically involve multiple team
members, and a typical sales or service professional is expected to juggle multiple tasks. It’s
important that these professionals have tools and product information readily available to identify
appropriate products and services for their clients and to respond to investors when sales and
marketing performance need to be enhanced. Microsoft Unified Communications solutions are
powerful enterprise collaboration technologies that compress the time it takes to gather time‐
sensitive information from various communication channels to dissemination to their clients.
Streamlined communications and collaboration, fully integrated within CRM enables end users to
quickly and easily find the right person and click to communicate from within everyday software
applications and business processes, and convey accurate and timely information to all parties
concerned. With voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), enterprise telephony, and integration of the
firm’s telephony and e‐mail infrastructures with unified messaging, an organization gets a robust e‐
mail, voicemail, calendaring, instant messaging, and conferencing solution that is cost effective and
easy to manage.
A challenge of providing great customer service today is related to expanding and enriching each of
multiple service delivery channels from which the client wants to interface with the business.
Although most companies have established client websites, some sites lack transactional capabilities
and many do not provide the real‐time visibility of a customer’s data and account status. Dynamics
CRM provides a central repository of customer information accessible via multiple channels to a wide
range of audiences, therefore, enabling everyone to access the same information across multiple
devices.
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11. 4 EXTENDED CRM
Businesses today need to maximize the value of their relationships. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM
business software and the xRM application framework, organizations can quickly and easily extend
their CRM solution and build custom applications to track any business relationship–without
compromising features, capabilities, budget and delivery time. The Dynamics CRM 2011 framework
provides a flexible and extensible services infrastructure to host multiple applications leveraging
scalable hosting models, multi‐tenancy support, and enabling application capabilities such as offline
support and ad‐hoc reporting that generally involve significant engineering effort.
Extended CRM is all about relationships and connections. In a typical business organization,
relationships no longer just span the customer. Organizations in today’s complex business
environment need to be able to track all relevant relationships. The new Connections feature within
Dynamics CRM 2011 enables organizations can easily define and set‐up any relationship they want to
track, assign attributes to it, and then actually associate individuals to that relationship. For example,
an enterprise sales team may have a complex sales process, and for a particular product or service,
they may have a target role to sell to. For example, a potential sale to a CXO may involve buy‐in from
peripheral roles like in‐house lawyers, tax consultants, and accountants. The Connections feature
allows these key role definitions, their association to specific individuals, as well as end‐to‐end
tracking of all associated actions and activities.
Dynamics CRM is built on and works with Microsoft technology that organizations worldwide are
familiar with and don’t require significant learning curve for deployment. From a business user
standpoint, the system works with the familiar tools they use every day, which not only reduces
training requirements but increases the utilization of existing systems. With Dynamics CRM,
organizations can leverage existing Microsoft investments including:
Office
Visual Studio
.NET
Unified Communications
Exchange
SQL Server
BizTalk Server
WPF and Silverlight
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12. Role Based User Experience
One of the most effective ways to improve the business fit of business solutions is to ensure that the
solution is optimized for each specific role. Dynamics CRM 2011, with the role‐tailored experience,
provides a whole new set of capabilities around declarative design and specifically around role‐
tailored forms. Organizations can create forms specific to each individual role and tailor the amount
of information, order, and presentation of information that is displayed on that form. For example,
they could create a different Opportunity form for a sales VP versus a sales rep: one showing an
aggregate view and the other showing more detailed sales information.
From an Extended CRM standpoint, they could also create specific data views for non‐traditional
roles. For example, they could create a new form for an operations manager, another one for IT
manager, another one for a compliance officer, each showing different levels of data. Tailoring the
presentation and order of information through role‐specific forms, organizations can increase the
relevancy of the information, the business fit, and ultimately the adoption.
When tools are not well integrated, end‐users must constantly switch between systems, screens,
applications, and various lines of business to find the information they need to answer clients’
questions. Dynamics CRM provides an environment where users’ work behaviors are molded around
separate silos of information to an environment where technologies more intuitively emulate users’
work behaviors, without concern about the underlying applications/technologies that provide it.
Business Designer Layer
A key enhancement in Dynamics CRM 2011 is that business users that are subject matter expeperts
for their line of business have the ability to customize and extend application areas with drag‐and‐
drop customization capabilities. They can easily create new business entities, add or change roles,
modify attribute definitions, add or change relationships between entities, and design new forms and
views for UI layout. All of these scenarios have traditionally required significant customization effort.
The business designer layer within Dynamics CRM enables these customizations to be performed with
minimal effort and little IT intervention. Dynamics CRM 2011 allows process definitions to be
exported and imported, a feature highly leveraged by customers and partners, as this allows for easy
deployment across organizations and CRM environments.
Managing Solutions
The new Solutions feature in Dynamics CRM 2011 provides a holistic feature set to allow
organizations to find, use, and manage complementary and value‐add solutions. The feature provides
a centralized console where organizations can install, uninstall, manage, and track solutions. For
example, organizations may want to use one of the many partner‐built solutions for Dynamics CRM,
or they may want to use third‐party applications that have pre‐built integrations to Dynamics CRM or
they may want to take advantage of industry‐specific applications or existing in‐house applications.
The feature significantly enhances manageability of those value‐add solutions and to extend out the
capabilities of Dynamics CRM.
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13. 5 DYNAMICS CRM IN THE CLOUD
Microsoft cloud services include a broad range of products ranging from business applications to
productivity suites. These include Dynamics CRM Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync. These services
extend beyond applications to the core platform with SQL Azure and Windows Azure. With cloud
computing still in its early days, business and technology decision makers today often look at cloud
computing through the lens of a single application, such as sales force automation as‐a‐service.
Microsoft’s approach of “the Cloud on your terms” provides customers with flexibility on their
software investments in the Cloud or on‐premise.
Feature Set
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online offering includes the following capabilities:
• Marketing—flexible segmentation tools, simplified campaign management capabilities, intuitive
response tracking, and insightful analytics.
• Sales—full lead to cash visibility, lead and opportunity tracking, streamlined approvals, and real‐
time sales forecasts.
• Customer Service—tools that simplify case management, streamline escalations, improve
knowledge sharing, and enable more effective account management.
• Extended CRM—a flexible framework that helps organizations to create custom business
applications and industry solutions.
It is important to note that Dynamics CRM Online service is based on the same code‐base as Dynamics
CRM on‐premise as well as Dynamics CRM service hosted by partner. Therefore, it includes essentially
the same set of features and functionality. The latest release of Dynamics CRM Online has full cloud
symmetry as it relates to feature parity. Some new features include support server‐side code, SRS
reports, data migration, and support for end‐customer web portals. This significantly reduces
limitations around customization, extensions and integration with other applications.
Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure
Microsoft operates datacenters around the world. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers are
provided with a managed resource instance of CRM that is allocated based on their needs. Business
audiences frequently voice concerns about security, privacy, reliability and operational control, as it
relates to leveraging business applications in the cloud. Microsoft has developed security principles
and processes through its decades‐long involvement in enterprise technology and is leveraging these
competencies in the cloud services environment. Each customer is provisioned with their own
customer database. This maximizes the security and integrity of the customer’s data. The Microsoft
Dynamics CRM Online architecture provides customers with complete autonomy over how they
operate, manage, configure, and secure their CRM solution. For example, customers can configure
their own data schema, user interface, business processes, and security model for their specific
instance. In this way, they have full control over the application and its functionality as if they were
running it on their servers.
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14. Having a “defense in‐depth” approach is a fundamental element in how Microsoft provides a
trustworthy cloud infrastructure. Applying controls at multiple layers involves employing protection
mechanisms, developing risk mitigation strategies, and being capable of responding to attacks when
they occur. The most recent version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online privacy policy is available
at https://signin.crm.dynamics.com/portal/static/4105/privacy.htm.
Cloud services leverage virtualization technologies where data may be stored virtually and distributed
across many locations. Physical and network security measures are enforced, however, the focal point
of risk management shifts closer to the object level in the cloud environment. Safeguards are applied
on multiple fronts including securing the web application with SSL, custom defined security roles
which govern what users can access and the actions they can perform, field level security, full
business data auditing, and stringent physical security of Microsoft datacenters including building and
system/database access. Additionally, the application itself uses standard security features of the
Microsoft software infrastructure on which Microsoft Dynamics CRM runs (such as Windows Server,
SQL Server, and Exchange Server).
Microsoft provides a service level agreement (SLA) governing the service availability for the term of
the subscription. The Dynamics CRM Online SLA is available at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=196557.
Authentication
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online uses the Windows Live ID service to manage identity and trust,
providing a single sign on experience that allows businesses and customers to use a single set of
credentials for accessing various websites or applications. With Windows Live ID, the password
recovery is based on a secret question/response provided by the user upon registration. Adding a
new user is simplified with entering the user’s name, email address, and Security Role information
into the user administration screen, and inviting them to the system. Users can be removed from the
system by disabling the user in Dynamics CRM Online.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is planning to offer support for different authentication providers in
a future release, thereby allowing:
• Users to be authenticated against services managed by the customer.
• Specific password policies to be specified and enforced by the customer.
Additional information about Windows Live ID is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en‐
us/library/bb288408.htm
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15. 6 PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 supports load balancing across multiple servers. During
deployment, an administrator can install certain Dynamics CRM Server components and
services in a load‐balanced infrastructure, representing a server role, on different servers.
Administrators can also specify one or both of two server role groupings, or to have two or
more servers running the same role. Enterprise scale has been a key tenet of Dynamics CRM
since early releases. The most recent benchmark performed on Dynamics CRM demonstrates
that a single instance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on Intel® processor‐based servers with solid
state drive hardware can scale to support an enterprise implementation of 150,000 concurrent users,
achieving discrete atomic response times under one second.
Based on these results of this benchmark, an organization with a similar data and transaction volume
can expect similar results. Multiple factors can affect performance, including the following:
• Number of records in the database
• Number, type, and frequency of transactions
• Processing power dedicated to workflows or plug‐ins
While this benchmark demonstrates scalability under high transaction rates, customers should
evaluate the requirements of their own environments before undertaking a large‐scale deployment.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Performance and Stress Testing Toolkit, a framework for performance
testing of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, formed the basis of this benchmark. The test cases were created
using this toolkit, and it also facilitated load testing of the simulated environment. This toolkit is
planned to be made available as a free download, and can be used by customers and partners to
evaluate the potential viability of Dynamics CRM within their own infrastructure.
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16. 7 SUMMARY
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is built on state‐of‐the‐art technologies that allow organizations to
leverage robust CRM capabilities as a cloud service or as an on‐premises application. The XRM
framework, available as part of the Dynamics CRM solution provides line‐of‐business specialists and IT
organizations the ability to build flexible and familiar solutions, leading to significant reduction in time
to build and deploy these solutions as well as the ability to consume these applications in a browser,
mobile device, or within Microsoft Office.
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