Roadmap - the way ahead
Vizola eMarketing (VEM) was originally conceived as an inexpensive solution to
monitor email recipient activity with MS CRM 3.0 without commitment to a
subscription offering. Since then it has embraced the change to multi-tenant
deployments in CRM 4.0 and solution-based deployments in CRM 2011. It continues
to be enhanced and offer features desired by both existing- and new customers.
VEM4
VEM4 architecture is oriented toward on-premise installations supporting from
10 to 1000 users. It may be installed in a number of configurations to support the
existing infrastructure, including multiple Application Role servers.
VEM4 utilises a separate SQL database to provide for specialised reporting
queries and localisation information, however this is gradually being phased out
in order to reduce footprint.
Continually being enhanced with more features, mostly in response to partner and
customer requests. Most recently Google Analytics support
within VEM has been announced. As long as CRM 4.0 continues to be an active platform
we will support VEM4.
Upgrading to CRM2011
For existing customers with software assurance who wish to upgrade to the CRM 2011
platform we offer an advantageous upgrade license for VEM2011.
CRM 2011 allows the upgrading of supported code in existing CRM 4 organisations
to the new environment utilising legacy mode, however there are some more
fundamental changes in VEM2011 - including moving ISV-folder files to WebResources and ISV-Config elements
to ribbon elements.
For this reason we strongly recommend uninstalling VEM4 prior to upgrade
and then installing VEM2011 afterward - in this way custom attributes and entities
are preserved and the VEM2011 installation can then setup up the new environment.
In fact we would further recommend you even delete the VEM custom entities and custom attributes on email, list
in order to retain the full benefits of CRM2011 managed solutions.
VEM2011
With the launch of CRM 2011 there have been some significant changes in the way
third-party (publisher) solutions can be incorporated into the system. Solutions
can now be 'managed', which gives better separation and offers the system
administrator easier installing and uninstalling.
For the first time, the introduction of sandboxed plugins and fetchXml reports mean code can now
be run inside either a shared hosted or online environment, so we have been able to have VEM2011
tested 'Platform Ready' for CRM Online, which opens more options for customers. Naturally this
new environment has necessitated some big architectural changes in VEM - including moving
custom workflow activities to workflow jobs utilising Connections, caching summary data for reports,
moving server-side functions to jQuery and much more.
We have now separated the installation of the VEM2011 Web & Email Components from the VEM2011 Solution,
which still requires an internet-facing on-premise installation, so these two pieces are matched
during installation. The Web Components URL can be set within the VEM2011 Solution Configuration and
the CRM URL is required when installing the VEM2011 Web Components.
VEM 2011 is now the standard platform for all new VEM features, whilst VEM4 continues to be supported for
our existing customer base.
VEM2011 Azure Components
In order to address the needs of customers who use CRM Online Edition and are embracing 'the move to the cloud'
we are offering customers Azure-based monitoring and image storage,
which means you no longer need to deploy an internet-facing webserver for the VEM monitoring site.
Customers will henceforth have a choice of deployment models for VEM2011 depending upon whether they wish to utilise
on-premise infrastructure or online subscriptions. In fact we also envisage deployments in which a
partner reseller will setup and manage the VEM2011 Web Components - whether hosted on their own servers or in Azure.
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