Microsoft CRM 4.0 RTM and what it really means

Posted by Mike Snyder on December 18, 2007  |  Comments (1)

If you're reading this blog, you probably already know that Microsoft announced yesterday that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was released-to-manufacturing (RTM). Of course, this caused a great deal of excitement around the Sonoma Partners office, and we're already hearing buzz from customers about upgrading. I thought I would try to address some of the common questions I've heard about the CRM 4.0 announcement:

• While the development team is done with their part, customers and partners will need to wait "7 to 10 days" before they can download the software. I took a peek at the MSDN downloads tonight but of course it wasn't posted yet. I tried to subscribe to a Microsoft RSS feed to notify me of new MSDN downloads but...this thing hasn't been updated since 2006! I guess we'll just login to MSDN everyday and keep checking. Sigh.
  
  
• Yesterday's RTM announcement does NOT apply to CRM Live. Customers who want to get on CRM Live will need to continue to work through the early adopter programs. Expect CRM Live to be ready for public access in the first half of calendar 2008.
  
  
• Even though the main Microsoft Dynamics CRM product is complete, none of the Microsoft CRM add on solutions will be released at the same time. Microsoft has not publicly confirmed which add-ons they will release but we can take a good guess based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 add-ons. Therefore, we assume (hope) that there will be 4.0 versions of these add-ons released in the coming months:
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Mobile
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Connector for Microsoft Dynamics GP
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 BizTalk Server Adapter
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Sharepoint List Web Part
    
  
  
• One current Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 user said they weren't sure if it was worth the effort to upgrade to 4.0 because 3.0 works fine. For the next 5 minutes I rattled off about 25 great new benefits and they said "Ok, nevermind. It sounds great!" If you're a current 3.0 customer and you're not sure what benefits 4.0 offers, please contact us and we'd be happy to share our ideas on the upgrade benefits.

Congrats to the product team on all their hard work. After working with the new version over the past 12+ months, I can confidently state that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is an amazing release.

At Sonoma Partners of course we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM for our internal sales, marketing, service and project management. We've already completed a half dozen trial upgrades of our internal system to 4.0 and we plan on upgrading to the final RTM bits as soon as possible after release. Even though I can't definitively prove this, I like to think we were the first company in the world to upgrade to Microsoft CRM 3.0 way back in November 2005. We plan to be the first again on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0!