VARs Await Microsoft CRM

The software giant acknowledged last week that Microsoft CRM will miss its planned ship date in 2002 and that Release Candidate 2 will move to testing shortly.

RC2 testing will be completed in January, and the software will be released to manufacturing in early 2003, a Microsoft spokeswoman said. Microsoft does not expect the delay to push back a global version 1.1 release planned for the second half of 2003, she added.

Channel partners said the delay should have little impact, but Microsoft CRM will face an uphill battle for market share against spreadsheets and contact management offerings used by smaller customers as well as new CRM offerings for the SMB market from Intuit and Oracle.

"Microsoft CRM's server will have a difficult adoption in the SMB channel," said Ronald Lang, senior consultant at Majestic Consulting Group, Marlton, N.J. "The main issue is technology. The .Net technology needs to almost be a standard. The balance of the back-office infrastructure is extensive to learn and very expensive if you need to add or upgrade the technology."

Another solution provider said Microsoft CRM will not succeed unless the value-add features and .Net integration points are exploited.

"One of the big problems with successful CRM implementations is that they rarely meet their goals," said Jeffrey Sherman, president of Warever Computing, Los Angeles. "The promise, though, is that every type of customer contact is kept in one place. But this usually means integration with various legacy apps, and that is almost never done properly or completely. %85 SMB customers usually don't have the budget to do all that much work."

All Microsoft partners can sell Microsoft CRM Standard, and pricing is slated to start at $395 per user and $995 for the server. Microsoft CRM Professional, priced from $1,200 per user and $1,999 for the server, will be available only through certified Microsoft Business Solution partners.