Is Microsoft CRM a dream application? Read and weep...

Once you have it (let's call it it and when I talk bout it I mean Microsoft CRM 3.0 on-premise) up and running it's all fine, that is if you don´t use it. Since applications however are there to use, you eventually will have to start living the dream. So if your system admin does not reboot the server after installing something it will probably be available until a crash of IIS or a memory leak exhausted all the available resources. However, before you have it up and running you will probably gain a few grey hairs or pull out some of pure frustration. Installing MS CRM 3.0 is not a breeze. It´s a dream alright. But not a nice one, it's a nightmare. Why?

MS CRM requires a Windows Server installation, preferably 2003, it also requires an active directory because you can only add users to the application if they are in the AD. CRM stores its data in SQL-Server. It works with 2005 but SQL-Server 2000 is recommended. IIS has to be running on the server, and Reporting Services is required for running reports. For full fledged use of exchange an email router has to be installed on the Exchange server and if users want to use the Outlook client instead of the web client there is a separate install available which allows you to can also work offline with CRM data by creating a local database. And I almost forgot; Internet Explorer is required to access the application from the web client. When the installation is done, the application needs to be configured to be able to support the applicable business processes. There are no verticals delivered with CRM 3.0, it's merely an application platform which requires some work to get it right.

All the (Microsoft) applications mentioned must have a certain service pack installed; none of them still has the original version running. CRM is squeezed between all these (Microsoft) applications making them all interconnected and dependant on each other. The application we wanted to install (you would almost want to forget) is available since December 2005 and since then Microsoft created 31 updates and 263 hotfixes for this 1 app alone, check for yourselves, you can find them here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908951. No wonder they don't support CRM 3.0 anymore.

In the meantime CRM 3.0 is replaced by its successor Microsoft CRM 4.0 which will have more success, that's for sure. Look and feel and integration with other (Microsoft) applications is a big plus. CRM 4.0 is beautiful dream (especially the Live and partner hosted versions) compared to the CRM 3.0 nightmare.

Thank God for SaaS