The First Major CRM Release of 2011
This month, I want to focus on probably the most important new CRM release of the last few years...
In my view, this is a great time to launch since the last few years, looking back, have been marked with minor releases or vendors filling in their functionality gaps or indeed catching up with their offerings. All of which may not be unsurprising given that corporate buyers have been very cautious over the last year or so in their investment decisions.
MS CRM Dynamics 2011
MS CRM 2011 on-premises was officially released last week, meaning MS CRM 2011 is now available in three different deployment models:-
- Hosted
- On site or On-premises installations.
- 3rd Party hosted
This was MS CRM first launch of a major version upgrade for some time and uniquely, they launched their online version first in a global launch in 40 countries in January at an incredibly attractive offer price. The MS CRM 2011 version on-premises can now be downloaded and was unveiled last week.
Unless you want or need to be at the cutting edge, then we would generally advise waiting a few months for this release to ‘bed in’ whilst we also able conduct our own tests on the final production version. Generally, when speaking with our clients, unless there is some new critical functionality required, then we recommend waiting for the first service pack release to appear.
There are a number of changes, not least the unique fact that MS Outlook and MS CRM are now written in the same code base, which is a big first. Microsoft themselves have had over 25000 internal users on this system since the ’Fall’ of 2010 and interestingly MS CRM 2011 can now scale up to 150000 users!
MS CRM 2011 looks set to be a very exciting launch and with the offer price for the online version set (until June 2011) at £22.75 per user, based on a 12 month contract, this is a very attractive offer for those considering CRM for the first time, although there are some restrictions which may not appeal to all larger users. How this pricing may translate to the other deployment offerings remains to be seen, but this does demonstrate an absolute commitment to by Microsoft to dominating the CRM hosted and on premises sector over the next few years.
I will return in more detail to this release over the coming weeks, in particular some of the customisation add-ons which enable you to extend the standard functionality. However, for those of you interested in viewing how MS CRM can help your business, this link is an excellent MS CRM 2011 demonstration video
