"Our mission is to give you a set of tools that will help you become a dynamic business," said Kirill Tatarinov, Microsoft's corporate vice president for business solutions, during a keynote address. "We will stay the course... we will help you endure, prevail and win."

Some new products announced today are meant to bolster that promise.

A new update for CRM Online adds a service-level agreement guaranteeing 99.9% uptime. Customers will get a credit for one month's service in the event of any unscheduled outages, Microsoft said. The update also includes cloud integration services for connecting with other applications, and "quick-start tools" to help customers learn how to use the applications quickly.

Microsoft is also shipping eight new CRM Accelerators, add-on modules that can be downloaded at no charge. Accelerators are available for analytics, enterprise search, event management and sales methodologies, among other areas.

Show goers were also offered as much as 20% off purchases of Dynamics AX, GP, NAV and SL products and support services.

Meanwhile, the recession presents an opportunity for companies to shake up the way they run IT for the better, Tatarinov said.

"Today, many people fall into a trap of thinking this is going to end and go back to normal," he said. "When [the economy] comes back, it is not going to be back to normal. We need to position ourselves today for the different world that will emerge."

Tatarinov elaborated during a post-keynote Q&A session.

He mentioned the ongoing economic stimulus efforts by governments around the world but said, "it's not happening for free. The price tag is deeper regulation and stricter compliance that can only be delivered through tools and automation."

Also, members of Generation Y who grew up using Facebook will demand business software that doesn't need a thick instruction manual, he said.

Toward that end, Tatarinov's keynote touched upon the "role-tailored" user interface features Microsoft has begun adding to Dynamics.

He also provided attendees a peek into the future, demonstrating business applications developed for use with a multitouch computer from its Surface unit.

One Surface program was designed for use in a warehouse setting, where a Surface device might be more practical than a traditional laptop, because the environment is likely to be dirty and dusty and because workers are constantly walking around.

Microsoft expects that over time, the company's integration partners will end up building such applications on a case-by-case basis for their customers, according to Tatarinov.

He added that the same Surface application could run on Windows 7, which has multitouch capabilities, when the new operating system is released. Toward that end, Microsoft is already developing a multitouch business-process-modeling tool for Dynamics.

Convergence continues throughout the week in New Orleans.

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