Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Offers Peek At Next-Gen CRM

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-a-taste dept.

4foot10 writes "As reported by VARBusiness.com, Microsoft's next release of its Dynamics CRM application, code-named 'Titan', is moving a little closer to completion. Today, the vendor is making the new software, which uses a single code base to support on-premise and software-as-a-service deployments, available to several hundred business partners for testing, giving them an early start on developing complementary solutions."

5 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What's a CRM? by seebs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Thanks! But what's it DO?

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  2. Re:What's a CRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, that sounds great ... but what does it DO?

  3. Re:Typical CRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You're either lying or mis-informed. Changing the video card will not cause activation to reset on a Windows box. I'm an avid gamer, I change cards every couple of months and this has never happened to me. Major hardware updates like changing the motherboard will cause an activation reset. It isn't Microsoft right to tell you what you can and cannot do with your hardware; however it is thier right to tell you what you can and can't do with thier software. It's called licensing and Microsoft license is just as valid and relevant as GPL, LGPL or any one of the myriad of open source licenses around. If Microsoft licenses software for 1 motherboard only so be it, that's thier perogative. If you decide you don't want that, then don't buy Microsoft products; there are plenty of viable alternatives on the market.

    You are also either lying or mis-informed about the urgency of a case. The person who triages a case makes no assumption about the urgency of a case. In fact, during the support call the initial triage asks you how you feel the case rates in urgency. They make no assumptions and ask you to define it yourself. Having an activation reset could be a mission critical issue, if the box in question is hosting a very, very important application or it could be considered get to it whenever if it's an extra workstation that the kids normally play games on. Again, when you call Microsoft support they make no assumptions about the urgency of your case.

    I don't buy into anything or any propaganda. I'm an informed consumer who has decided that by and large Microsoft makes good software and provides excellent support. I don't mind paying for that support or that software and I don't give a damn if it comes with source code that I can modify. I'm also an avid Linux user and have fiddled with FreeBSD for a number of years. Each platform is useful in various scenarios. The only person in this discussion who sounds like he drank some funky Kool-Aid is you.

  4. Re:What's a CRM? by Dunbal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So is toilet cleaning. But I don't care about that industry either.

          Let me guess, you own a gas station?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  5. Re:What's a CRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Funny, and mostly true, but there's another side to that coin.
    I just did a job rewriting a CRM for a company.

    Here's the requirements they gave me:

    Here's our current application. We need to replace it and all it's functionality.
    That's it. No details on what functionality that app contained and no source code. I begged for more information but they said there was none.
    I spent far more time reverse engineering that application to determine how it interacted with the database & user than actually writing/testing code. When I completed the project and we did a pilot, they came back with a list of things that the pilot users said the application wasn't doing correctly. So of course we told them that those things weren't included in our SOW, which was TRUE. (The SOW was based on the discovery/reverse engineering effort and explicitly stated what functionality would be included in the app.)

    I have never done a contracting job for a company where the requirements were complete. Every single contract, I have agreed to add on a few small things that weren't in the SOW.

    The real problem is that most companies put forth a minimal effort when hiring contractors. eg. They don't assign project managers, they drag their feet on requests, and don't want to be engaged in the development cycle to see if the application is what they wanted in the first place.