While the folks in Redmond can take some comfort in being the fastest growing CRM solution among the “Big 4″, they are also cognizant that they are still fourth in the market behind Oracle, SAP and Salesforce. At Convergence 2010 this week in Atlanta, the product management team for Microsoft Dynamics CRM discussed some of the ways they hope to enhance their positioning against the other three.

The newest version of the platform, Dynamics CRM 5.0, is targeted for release at the end of 2010 and will address some of the key issues voiced by the user community with the current release. “The focus is on simplicity, innovation, and value” remarked David Patterson in his presentation at Convergence. As an example of the value focus, he highlighted the introduction of Dynamics CRM in 41 languages, and the inclusion of their proprietary solution accelerators available for no additional charge.

In a Q & A session at Convergence, Craig Unger, general manager of Dynamics CRM R&D emphasized both the flexibility and integration capabilities of Dynamics CRM 5.0. “A couple years ago, we talked about the cloud as the power of choice. Increasingly we’re talking about the cloud and software plus services…a hybrid approach.” He addressed the importance of the “consumerization” of Dynamics CRM 5.0 – “delivering the experience as the user does.” This includes, for example, integrating CRM with Outlook, having “little bits of CRM on your mobile phone,” and being able to capture leads from social networks, all without having to go back and forth between two or three applications.

It also appears that Dynamics CRM 5.0 will provide an improved user interface and data visualization features, enhanced sales and marketing capabilities, and tighter integration with Microsoft’s SharePoint Server collaboration platform, things that users have been asking about since the release of CRM 4.0.