By David Sims
TMCnet Contributing Editor
At Microsoft’s Convergence 2007 Copenhagen customer event, Microsoft officials say it is hosting firms from around the world that are “committed to delivering on-demand customer relationship management (CRM)” products based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, formerly code-named “Titan,” due out later this year.
Partners building new on-demand products on Microsoft Dynamics CRM include Mondo A/S, a Danish IT services company; JayThom, a hosted and on-premises Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider in Australia, and Increase, a British-based hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider.
Partners building new on-demand products on Microsoft Dynamics CRM include Mondo A/S, a Danish IT services company; JayThom, a hosted and on-premises Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider in Australia, and Increase, a British-based hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider.
These new partners join what Microsoft officials call “an extensive range of existing partners around the world that deliver on-demand products for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) products.”
Microsoft has also announced that it plans to lower the subscription licensing fees paid by its global hosting partners for Microsoft Dynamics CRM by approximately 40 percent. The company says the price reduction is “consistent with Microsoft’s long-standing strategy to deliver more affordable CRM technology through on-premise and partner-hosted deployments as well as the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live service.”
Dynamics CRM 4.0 offers a software platform that is multi-tenant and scalable, and supports multiple languages and currencies. By using a single code base for on-premises and on-demand deployments, customers are able to choose whichever model suits their business and IT needs, and to change their option over time if their needs or preferences change.
The software giant has a ticklish problem to deal with — it wants to develop its hosted applications, but needs to keep its huge partner community happy. Companies are generally resistant to using third-party hosted CRM, and many analysts see the significant price drop as a way of luring such reluctant customers to Microsoft’s on-demand CRM.
Last month, Microsoft released a pair of Windows Vista updates, one of which is “specifically a performance booster for the new operating system,” according to company officials. This move shows that, as would be expected, performance remains a top concern for computer sites, and especially for CRM, dependent on high-speed database access.
Issues addressed by the “performance booster” update are speed of wake-up from hibernation and quicker time calculation for the movement of large files.
Performance problems generally can have many sources, Microsoft officials say, including insufficient memory, outdated chipsets, and poorly-written applications. A prime source of poor performance, however, is disk file fragmentation. It can cause such performance issues as slow boot-up, sluggish Web browsing, slow application loading, and delayed file access.
Server fragmentation issues can, of course, cause further-reaching issues due to the high-volume constant access of server data. “High-speed access to databases and CRM applications is obviously crucial both for company personnel and, today through the Web, directly by the public. CRM applications, once only used for internal employees on the phone, now interface with Web applications so that customers and even employees can interact with the company online,” Microsoft officials say.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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