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Pivotal CRM and Microsoft: Evolving in Lock Step

Executive Summary

For more than a decade, Pivotal CRM has been the choice of Microsoft-centric orga-nizations that want the flexibility to model their specific business practices within their customer relationship management system. The Pivotal CRM product line leverages the Microsoft technology stack to provide not only usability and productivity advan-tages through integration to Microsoft Office, but also the reliability, scalability, and ease of integration and deployment required in an enterprise-strength CRM solution.

CDC Software is moving Pivotal CRM onto the Microsoft .NET Framework to allow our customers to realize its benefits, including simplified deployment and ongoing management of Pivotal CRM solutions, more flexible customization capabilities, cost-effective integration, and an enhanced user experience.

Pivotal CRM | White Paper �

For more than a decade, Pivotal CRM has been the choice of Microsoft-centric organizations that want the flexibility to model their specific business practices within their customer relationship management system. CDC Software cooperates closely with Microsoft to ensure Pivotal CRM customers can always take advantage of the latest advances in Microsoft technology. The Pivotal CRM product line leverages the Microsoft technology stack to provide not only usability and productivity advantages through integration to Microsoft Office, but also the reliability, scalability, and ease of integration and deployment required in an enterprise-strength CRM solution.

Microsoft’s latest technology stack is based on Microsoft .NET, which is enjoying widespread adoption within the software development community because it provides a standards-based platform for developing, integrating, and deploying service-oriented applications. Service-oriented applications are built as reusable components that can share the services they provide over the Internet, thus enabling true interoperability among applications written in different programming languages.

CDC Software is moving Pivotal CRM onto the Microsoft .NET framework to allow our customers to realize its benefits, including simplified deployment and ongoing management of Pivotal CRM solutions, more flexible customization capabilities, cost-effective integration, and an enhanced user experience.

Microsoft Products

Windows 2003 Supported

Windows Vista Under development

SharePoint Server 2007 Supported

SQL Server 2000 Supported

SQL Server 2005 Supported

MS Office XP/2002 Supported

MS Office 2003 Supported

MS Office 2007 Under development

Visual Studio 2003 Supported

Visual Studio 2005 Supported

Exchange 2003 Supported

Exchange 2007 Under development

BizTalk Server 2000 Supported

BizTalk Server 2004 Support planned

IIS 5.x Supported

IIS 6.0 Supported

IIS 7.0 Supported

Adopting the Microsoft Roadmap As a Microsoft Global Independent Software Vendor (GISV), CDC Software benefits from a managed relation-ship that spans multiple corporate dimensions, including sales engagements, co-marketing, and technology adop-tion. This distinguishes us in terms of technology access, go-to-market cooperation, and support services from the 7000+ companies that Microsoft defines as “partners.”

CDC Software is a Gold Certified Partner and full participant in Microsoft’s GISV Partner Advisory Council, an invitation-only group of Microsoft’s top 40 global ISVs. As a member of the GISV-PAC, we provide input on Microsoft’s programs and go-to-market strategies.

As a result, we are able to take a proactive approach to supporting Microsoft’s core platform products by participating in beta, pre-release, and early access programs. Wherever possible, we align our Pivotal CRM roadmap with Microsoft’s, allowing our customers to take first-mover advantage of new capabilities in Microsoft’s core platform products and ensuring customers can lever-age and extend their existing infrastructure investments.

Pivotal CRM | White Paper 2

Microsoft SQL ServerPivotal CRM solutions can take advantage of the powerful business intelligence (BI) capabilities in SQL Server 2005, including integration services, analysis services, reporting services, and data mining, allowing businesses to apply complex multi-dimensional analysis capabilities to operational CRM data. Information relevant to each user’s needs can be displayed in portals personalized to each role, improving the customer experience through better access to decision-making data. For example, SQL Server’s BI capabilities make it possible to perform sales forecasting and create executive dashboards that offer key business performance indicators at a glance.

Additionally, because SQL Server 2005 is part of the Windows® Server System™ line of products, Pivotal CRM customers can benefit from reduced total cost of ownership and faster development time when integrating to other Windows Server System products.

With respect to Pivotal CRM and the BI capabilities of SQL Server 2005, CDC Software’s intentions include building out a reporting structure based on Microsoft Reporting Services, which offers a single, server-based point of focus for delivery of both traditional static reports to user desktops and interactive reports via the Internet.

Pivotal CRM: Built on the Microsoft Technology Foundation

Microsoft Operating SystemsPivotal CRM is optimized for the Windows platform and utilizes advanced operating system features to improve performance, scalability, manageability, and usability, greatly reducing the effort of deploying Pivotal CRM solu-tions. Additionally, Pivotal CRM solutions take advantage of Windows 2000/2003 Advanced Server Network Load Balancing services to distribute IP traffic across a Pivotal CRM-deployed application cluster of standard, low-cost Intel servers, reducing the cost of implementing an enterprise-strength solution.

Microsoft Internet Information ServerMicrosoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is the key infrastructure behind Pivotal CRM’s reliable, manageable, and scalable web-based CRM applications, facilitating synchronization of not only data, but also upgrades and customizations, to all systems within and beyond enterprise boundaries.

Pivotal CRM | White Paper 3

Microsoft BizTalk Server Pivotal CRM can leverage Microsoft BizTalk Server to integrate business processes within and between organizations. The Pivotal Integration Connector provides BizTalk-compatible schemas that facilitate developing, executing, managing, and optimizing distributed business processes.

Customers that choose to integrate their CRM business processes using BizTalk can also take advantage of the application and technology adapters that come standard with BizTalk Server, including connectors for such line-of-business applications as SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and JD Edwards.

Microsoft Exchange Server Pivotal CRM ships pre-integrated with Microsoft Outlook and the Exchange Server communications infrastructure, enabling users to not only manage all customer e-mail communications from within the Pivotal CRM application, but also to ensure that their contacts and scheduling data are always up-to-date in both their Pivotal CRM solution and Outlook.

Microsoft OfficeInteroperability with Microsoft Office is a key capability of Pivotal CRM, allowing information workers to use the tools with which they are most familiar. Pivotal LetterExpress provides the capability to perform mail merges between Pivotal CRM data and Microsoft Word documents. Pivotal CRM also offers integration to Microsoft Outlook, as well

as the ability to look up Pivotal CRM data directly within any Microsoft Office application. A Web Service makes any Office document (including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) a gateway into the Pivotal CRM database.

For example, when a user is creating a contract in Microsoft Word, the company’s name will automatically be highlighted. If the user right-clicks on the highlighted name, that company’s Pivotal-based record will be displayed in a sidebar in Word so the user can quickly get the customer’s fax number or other required details—there’s no need to switch or cut and paste between applications. In this way, users can work in their favored environment, Microsoft Office, organizing information, scheduling meetings, tracking progress, and creating and recording e-mailed communications. And by conducting every interaction in the context of the customer’s CRM data—which includes support issues, purchase history, contact preferences, and more—the quality of every customer interaction is improved.

In Sedna (the codename for the next release of the Pivotal CRM platform, a.k.a. Pivotal CRM 6.0), CDC Software will deliver even deeper integration between Pivotal CRM and Microsoft Outlook, providing direct access to e-mail, Exchange, calendars, and contacts. Outlook task panes will allow users to display relevant Pivotal CRM data when working in Outlook, in order to access contextual customer information without having to toggle between systems.

Pivotal CRM customers deploying a web-based solution can take advantage of Microsoft IIS 6.0’s support of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI)—which includes automated health monitoring, process isolation, and improved management capabilities—to increase application availability while lowering system administration costs.

Pivotal CRM | White Paper 4

Microsoft Visual Studio®

When customizing their Pivotal CRM solution, customizers currently work within Pivotal CRM’s own graphical toolkit to make modifications at all levels of the application, from designing forms to modifying workflow to creating extensions. With Sedna, customizers will be able to take advantage of the Visual Studio Forms Designer to create and edit Pivotal CRM forms using drag-and-drop functionality.

CDC Software’s proposed product direction is to investigate whether the Pivotal Toolkit can be integrated with Visual Studio to provide customers with a single integrated development environment from which to build, deploy, and manage Pivotal CRM applications.

CompatibilityCDC Software’s policy is to provide compatibility between Pivotal CRM and new versions of key Microsoft products as they are released.

Migrating to Microsoft .NETThe current Pivotal CRM platform (generation 5.x) has been formally .NET-certified and is on its way to becoming fully .NET native. As with any enterprise software solution, it is imperative that a balance is established between the desire to embrace the future while protecting existing cus-tomer investments. To that end, CDC Software is pursuing a strategic adoption of .NET that allows customers to evolve their Pivotal CRM solution via migration, rather than forcing complete reimplementation.

An Evolving Three-Tier ArchitecturePivotal CRM solutions are built on a three-tier Internet application architecture (the Pivotal CRM platform) with clear separation of the presentation services tier (user interface), business services tier (where business logic resides), and data services tier (where customer data is kept separate from metadata, or information about the customer data).

Outlook Task Pane with Sedna Capabilities (Mockup)

Additionally, Sedna will utilize Microsoft SharePoint to allow customers to create standard launch pages— interactive portals that give employees in different functional areas direct access to their most commonly used features. For example, customizers will be able to create a standard portal for Technical Support employees, a different one for salespeople, for marketing, and so on. Customizers can then populate each portal with task menus that feature the kinds of commonly used tasks specific to the user function. End users will then be able to personalize their standard portal by adding in new web parts (either those defined by the customizer or imported from a third party, including Microsoft) or modifying existing web parts. In this way, users will be able to assemble their own highly personalized, relevant, and visually enhanced portals.

MS Outlook task pane displaying Pivotal CRM data

Pivotal CRM information related to the task being performed (i.e., literature fulfillment)

Automatically link the e-mail to Pivotal CRM. Customizers can define the business objects

to link to; end users can modify the links

Pivotal CRM | White Paper 5

The Business Services Tier for the Pivotal 5.0 generation of CRM products started out exclusively based on COM+, but has evolved to include .NET capabilities while ensuring compatibility with all existing COM+ components. “Sedna+�” (the current moniker for the Pivotal CRM platform release to follow Sedna) will deliver .NET interfaces for all existing components and ensure that all new components can be developed natively in .NET.

The Presentation Services Tier has always offered customers a choice between multiple clients, allowing them to support their users according to their needs, whether they are LAN-based, remote, or mobile and whether they are using wireless or thin client devices. All current-generation Pivotal CRM deployments, however, have deployed one (or both) principal client(s):

Windows Client(Pivotal Windows

Client)

Pivotal Business Server (COM+)

Pivotal 5.0 Pivotal 5.x Sedna Sedna+1 (proposed)

Pivotal Business Server (COM+;

.NET)

Pivotal Business Server (COM+;

.NET)

Pivotal Business Server (.NET)

Web Client(Pivotal Rich

Client)

Business Module(metadata; VB6

code)

Enterprise(Customer)

DataBusiness Module(metadata; VB6;

C# code)

Enterprise(Customer)

DataBusiness Module

(metadata; C# code)

Enterprise(Customer)

DataBusiness Module

(metadata; C# code)

Enterprise(Customer)

Data

Windows Client(Pivotal Windows

Client)

Web Client(Pivotal Rich

Client)

Smart Client(Pivotal Client)

Smart Client(Pivotal Client)

PresentationServicesTier

BusinessServicesTier

DataServicesTier

Pivotal Windows Client, a feature- and func-tion-rich thick client primarily intended for users that require an application with high UI complexity and high responsiveness, and/or

Pivotal Rich Client, a feature-rich, web-based client intended to provide the interactive transactional support of Pivotal Windows Client, together with the low maintenance, low TCO, and high accessibility that a browser-based application provides.

With Sedna, CDC Software will replace these two Pivotal CRM clients with a single client built on Microsoft’s .NET-based Smart Client technology. Smart Clients offer the best features of thick clients—a rich user experience, high developer productivity, and high responsive-ness—by taking advantage of local processing power and resources, as well as the benefits of thin clients—broad reach, easy change management, and ease of deploy-ment—while avoiding their negative attributes. Sedna will continue to support all current access methods, but will provide a common presentation layer through which all LAN- and mobile-based users will be able to access their Pivotal CRM implementation.

At the Data Services Tier, all CRM system data is col-lected in two separate databases: the Business Module (BM) metadata database (which contains such applica-tion-specific features as forms, UI definitions, workflow, business rules, and table and record structures) and the Enterprise Data (ED) database (which contains just the customer information). In contrast to CRM applications that mix customer data together with metadata, Pivotal CRM’s separation of these elements not only promotes enrichment of customer data, but also allows Pivotal CRM

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applications to be easily customized at all levels, with no disruption to the rest of the system or to end users:

Data Model: Customize the underlying database entities or business objects that most closely model a customer’s business, such as changing and creating data elements and relationships between the data entities.

Business Processes: Design, update, and manage the business rules that define day-to-day busi-ness operations.

User Interface: Personalize the end user’s experi-ence of the CRM system.

The Pivotal 5.x generation provided full support for programming customizations in Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) and partial support for .NET-based programming languages. Sedna will continue to support and run exist-ing customizations, scripts, and extensions, but it will take full advantage of the Common Language Runtime (the execution engine of Microsoft .NET), which allows for the creation of highly efficient managed code written using new .NET programming languages like C# and VB.NET. This means that customers can deploy their existing system on the new Sedna platform, and then migrate their application over time to .NET. For new deployments, CDC Software will deliver out-of-the-box Pivotal CRM solutions based on C#, but will support customizations written in any .NET language.

CDC Software’s proposed product direction for Sedna+� is to make Pivotal CRM solutions .NET native (from front end to back end to the applications themselves), allowing customers to take advantage of all aspects of Microsoft’s next generation of technology.

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Pivotal CRM | White Paper 6

Adoption of .NET TechnologyAs Pivotal CRM evolves to embrace Microsoft .NET, new capabilities will be added to the Pivotal CRM platform, allowing customers to take advantage of a number of benefits.

Native Support for Web ServicesWeb Services help organizations interconnect their applications, facilitating the creation of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA lets businesses create a loosely coupled application infrastructure, speeding solution development and allowing them to respond more quickly to changing market conditions.

While the current generation of Pivotal CRM supports Web Services, Sedna’s native support will make it more cost-effective to integrate disparate applications, enabling our customers to execute every interaction (whether it origi-nates in the field, with a partner, or in the supply chain) in the context of a 360-degree view of their customers.

For example, customizers will be able to present data from disparate systems in the Pivotal CRM user interface, thereby allowing users to complete business processes that span multiple enterprise systems without having to leave the Pivotal CRM application. In this way, users are able to work with all relevant enterprise data and are empowered to take action faster and make better decisions.

Additionally, customers will be able to expose Pivotal CRM functionality as a Web Service to develop new revenue streams or facilitate application integration.

Smart Client TechnologyBuilt on Visual Studio 2005 Windows Forms technology, Smart Client applications are easy to use, deploy, and manage. They also have the additional benefit of being able to interact with distributed data sources across the enterprise and across the Internet.

Reducing TCOWith Microsoft .NET shipped on all modern Microsoft Windows computers (and made freely available for download to older systems), the .NET Framework will soon be as ubiquitous as the browser on the desktop. The ClickOnce capability of the .NET Framework allows Smart Client applications (like Sedna) to be deployed and updated seamlessly over LAN, WAN, or Internet connec-tions to all users, significantly reducing deployment and maintenance costs.

Additionally, because Smart Clients combine the best attributes of thick and thin clients, companies need only

install a single client for all local, remote, and mobile users of Pivotal CRM.

The implementation of Smart Client technology for Pivotal CRM aims to:

Reduce implementation and ongoing maintenance costs by centrally deploying, managing, and updating Pivotal CRM solutions, dramatically decreasing deploy-ment time, effort, and resources

Deploy the same Pivotal CRM implementation on mobile online/offline and desktop systems, lowering development, upgrade, and training costs

Improve the usability of a web-based implementation by providing the responsiveness and UI flexibility of a thick client, while also lowering the cost of deploying and maintaining a Windows Client-based Pivotal CRM solution

Reduce the cost of upgrading. Changes made to the application and/or client are automatically down-loaded the next time the user connects to the server. Additionally, standards-based integration significantly reduces the cost and complexity of upgrades.

Customization & User ExperienceThe user interface and user experience are key to the success of any CRM deployment. Sedna’s UI will leverage Microsoft’s Smart Client technology to deliver a more intuitive, responsive, and flexible task-oriented navigation structure and to improve the way that users interact with commonly used features.

Windows Forms, part of the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2005, is the core development platform for building Smart Client applications. Windows Forms give developers a comprehensive set of reusable, extensible controls and components that are presented in a WYSIWYG designer for quick development of sophisti-cated UIs.

In Sedna, when customizers work with Pivotal CRM forms, they will actually be creating, designing, and editing Windows Forms within the Pivotal Toolkit using the Visual Studio forms designer. The implementation of Windows Forms in Pivotal CRM will offer flexible form customization and rich data presentation, resulting in a more intuitive UI, better task-oriented, role-based, and persona-based navigation, and improved searching. Features will include:

A Microsoft Office 2007/Vista look and feel

A customizable task-oriented layout that allows users to navigate easily between functional areas

Customizable content-specific tasks, allowing users to quickly access their most commonly performed tasks

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Pivotal CRM | White Paper 7

The ability to place controls anywhere on forms, allow-ing customizers to more easily match the way their end users work

The ability to easily create complex queries

All of this will allow customizers to improve user adoption and productivity, as well as better model end-user and business requirements.

ExtensibilityPivotal CRM solutions built on the .NET Framework will allow our customers to utilize managed (.NET) code to extend their solution with lower risk by creating small, reusable, task-specific routines rather than taking a traditional software-development approach. For example, by consuming existing Web Services rather than building the required functionality into their solution, our customers can manage risk by lowering development cost and effort.

Additionally, Pivotal CRM will allow customers to create multiple portal pages to display web parts that are provided out of the box, created in-house, or available

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Task-Pad Functionality (Mockup)

from third parties, such as RSS feeds or those created for Microsoft SharePoint. Web parts can be powerful end-user productivity enhancers, allowing customizers, for example, to:

Display a task pad that draws information from other systems, allowing users to check order status without leaving their CRM application

Display a small contact form that provides a subset of the most-used fields/data, allowing end users to quickly enter/display just the contact information they require

Display all opportunity-related information in a single portal, so managers can monitor the status of all deals from a single, central location

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Each group has a list of related task menu items

Context-specific task pad

Related tasks are organized into group menu items

For more information or a complete list of our worldwide offices, please visit www.pivotal.com.

Copyright © CDC Software 2007. All rights reserved. The CDC Software logo and Pivotal CRM logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of CDC Software.

Conclusions: The Future of the Pivotal–Microsoft PartnershipPivotal CRM customers are committed to Microsoft and have already begun incorporating Microsoft’s .NET platform within their businesses. In support of our custom-ers and in order to retain a leadership position on the Microsoft platform, CDC Software is moving its product suite to become .NET native.

The Pivotal CRM roadmap is focused on ensuring customers will be able to migrate their Pivotal CRM implementation cost-effectively over time in order to take advantage of the new and improved features and functionality that .NET offers, including:

Low-Cost Flexibility: The ability to make changes to the data model, business processes, and UI utilizing graphical (WYSIWYG; drag-and-drop) and coding methods ensures customizers can quickly and cost-effectively evolve their implementation to match changing business needs.

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Best-of-Breed Industry Applications: Pivotal CRM solutions offer out-of-the-box, industry-specific business processes, as well as the flexibility to model unique business practices, no matter how complex.

Seamless Microsoft Office Integration: Information exchange between Pivotal CRM and Microsoft Office applications allows end users to manage their day without ever having to leave the Pivotal CRM application.

Standards-Based Enterprise Integration: Native support for Web Services streamlines the sharing of customer data across and between enterprises, facilitating customer-centric decision-making at all levels of the organization.

Rich User Experience: A UI consistent with the Microsoft Office 2007 look and feel delivers world-class presentation and navigation capabilities that are highly intuitive, responsive, and flexible.

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Portal Page (Mockup)

Web part personalization