My thoughts on Microsoft's CRM 3.0 so far

My organization recently brought on the Microsoft CRM 3.0 product and I am interested in what it can do for our customers. For those who have a large investment in the Microsoft technologies this solution seems to be a good fit. It's got an Outlook-like look and feel which makes it easier for end users to adopt. The majority of corporate workers including salespeople are working in Outlook all day . I think this tool could help organizations and their salespeople adopt CRM more easily. Their sales processes and best practices can be embedded in the desktop tools and experience they use today. We had an event for our clients that was well received on the new solution the other day but I am not going to hitch my wagon to just one publisher.

My biggest concerns are lack of maturity of the product and hopefully the R&D efforts will continue to improve the current system. This is what should have been the version 1.0 launch as it's still behind some of the major players like Siebel, Salesforce.com, and SalesLogix. However, Microsoft claims to have 250 developers working on the product and $80 Million going into the marketing so the best may be yet to come.