To: Mike M who wrote (7862 ) 2/5/2003 12:39:22 AM From: TEDennis Respond to An up close and personal review of Microsoft CRM's installation:The Microsoft CRM documentation yielded clues as to its heritage, it’s aim and the usual marketing vapour that promises much, without explanation of how to achieve it, right before the incredulous "What????" started ringing out loud and clear... "131 specific tasks must be completed just to install and start up the software? You've GOT to be joking!" The fact that the installation guide is 260 pages long means that this is no simple install. This is going to take time, and needs to be done extremely carefully... Microsoft has been very candid in declaring Microsoft CRM a great solution for the middle market. However, many pundits have written that the product is only appropriate for the very small business. Or, worse yet, that this is some secret effort to back into the enterprise market. I believe Microsoft is making a very simple observation: The middle market is huge and it is vastly underserved. Wherever they might take this product in the future, today it is clearly targeted at the middle market. This is a very reasonable solution for a group as small as five or 10 users. At the other end, the company is already performing stress tests with as many as 1,000 users. The key to remember is that Microsoft CRM is built on a scalable infrastructure that has been proven reliable in countless other applications. Today's feature set might not meet the requirements of every large prospect but the company is placing no artificial requirements on minimum or maximum seats. Some analysts have referred to Microsoft CRM as "merely Outlook on steroids." This is a miscalculation. This product is a nice CRM solution that will genuinely help sales people take better care of their customers and sell more now, if of course you can get it installed and commissioned correctly. The product really is pretty easy to use. Using an Internet Explorer interface, tied into Outlook and Exchange server, running on Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server, needing SQL Server 2000; this is no ordinary product. Right now, even after taking many hours to finally get it up and running, it will require an immense amount of effort to maintain…Far too much effort is required to install it, and with the extensive list of prerequisites that need to be installed first, the best possible way it can be released is to have it combined with all the dependant software in the iso. Our conclusion? Although a powerful first release of what will no doubt become a force in it’s market, as Microsoft is committing vast resources to it, it’s just too difficult and time consuming to set up and maintain, and the demands it puts on budgets place it out of reach for most of the target market. winbeta.org
