04-10-2012, 03:35 PM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a Customer Relationship Management software package developed by Microsoft. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Service (help desk) sectors, but Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it to meet many different demands.
The Microsoft Dynamics family of business applications includes other related products such asMicrosoft Dynamics AX (ERP application), Microsoft Dynamics GP, (ERP application) Microsoft Dynamics NAV (ERP application), and Microsoft Dynamics SL (ERP Application) and also Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System; also known as Dynamics RMS.
Dynamics CRM is a server-client application, which, like Microsoft SharePoint, is primarily an IIS-based web application which also supports extensive web services interfaces. Clients access Dynamics CRM either by using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later web browser or by a thick client plug-in to Microsoft Outlook. While other browsers can be used to access Dynamics, results can be mixed and are not supported by Microsoft.[citation needed]
The current version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is 2011.[2]
History
Microsoft CRM 1.0
Microsoft CRM 1.0 launched in January 2003.
Microsoft CRM 1.2
Microsoft CRM 1.2 was released December 8, 2003.[3] Microsoft CRM 1.2 was not widely adopted by industry.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
The second version was rebranded as Microsoft Dynamics 3.0 (version 2.0 was skipped entirely) to signify its inclusion within the Dynamics product family and was released December 5, 2005.[4] Notable updates over version 1.2 are the ease of creating customizations to CRM, the switch from using Crystal Reports to Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, the ability to run on Windows Vista and Outlook 2007, and support for Exchange 2007.
Significant additions released later by Microsoft also allowed Dynamics CRM 3.0 to be accessed by various mobile devices and integration with Siebel Systems.
This was the first version that saw reasonable take up by customers.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Dynamics CRM 4.0 introduced in December 2007.[5] It features multi-tenancy, improved reporting security, data importing, direct mail merging and support for newer technologies such as Windows 2008 [6] and SQL 2008 (Update Rollup 4).[7]
Dynamics CRM 4.0 also implements CRM Online, a hosted solution that is offered directly from Microsoft. The multi-tenancy option also allows ISVs to offer hosted solutions to end customers as well.
Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the first version of the product which has seen significant takeup in the market and passed the 1 million user mark in July 2009.[8]
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Dynamics CRM 2011 was released to open Beta in February 2010
It then went into Release Candidate stage in December 2010
The product was then released in February 2011