Michael Harvey

Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, Centric CRM

Open Software-as-a-Service
19 minutes, 8.8mb, recorded 2007-08-06
Michael Harvey

Centric CRM is many things: several million lines of published Java code that enable customer relationship management, a community that supports it, and a 7-year-old company that challenges conventional definitions of open source. In this conversation, Centric CRM's Michael Harvey contrasts Centric CRM from rival SugarCRM, which he says doesn't scale as well because it's written in PHP. Harvey then defends Centric CRM's take on open source: developers who want to build a commercial business on top of Centric CRM must sign a reseller agreement. Harvey also describes "open software-as-a-service" which lets Centric CRM customers easily move their apps from hosted facilities to their own data centers, and helps Centric CRM compete with Salesforce.com. Harvey also discusses Centric CRM customer Brand Fuel, and options for CRM via mobile devices and voice recognition.


Michael Harvey is executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Centric CRM. His career spans twenty years and a variety of major industries. It includes roles as a general manager, as a business strategy consultant, and as a board member. Harvey founded m.d.harvey & company in 1995 to provide strategy consulting to CEOs and senior executives in the technology, entertainment, and media industries. He has since completed many successful assignments for some of the leading companies in those fields including RealNetworks, Microsoft, and Corbis Corporation. Prior to establishing m.d.harvey & company, Harvey worked in a variety of marketing and general management positions for Microsoft Corporation from 1989 to 1995, helping to launch many major products and initiatives. Before joining Microsoft, Harvey worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street for J.P. Morgan, helping to establish the bank's first investment advisory service for institutional clients. Harvey also worked as an industrial engineer for IBM, designing high-end clean-room facilities for hard-disk manufacturing.He was one of the founding members of the highly successful and nationally noted Port Townsend Film Festival, now in its 8th year. He led both the festival's fundraising and marketing campaigns. Harvey also served on the board of directors of Silverlake Winery, a publicly held Washington State winemaker. Harvey received his degree in industrial engineering in 1986 from Stanford University's department of management science & engineering. He was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society and the Tau Beta Pi national engineering honor society. With his wife and two young daughters aboard, Michael skippered a forty-foot sailboat around the North American continent. Departing from Seattle, the family spent three years exploring coastal Mexico, Central America, Canada, and the United States.Harvey currently lives with his family in Norfolk, VA.

Resources:

This free podcast is from our Opening Move series.

For The Conversations Network: