Microsoft CRM 2011 early thoughts

In June I attended a Microsoft CRM bootcamp in Redmond with the CRM product team.  I spent several days learning about the newest CRM release once branded v5 and now 2011.  I have been impressed with the amount of work Microsoft has put into improving this product and shoring up some of the weak spots of the product.  I'm happy to report that functionality like audit trails and field level security is now out of the box and doesn't require a customization or 3rd party plug in.  The development team is also leveraging .NET 4.0 and the performance of the application has improved significantly.  From an eye candy perspective the most improved area is the dashboards.  Salesforce has dominated Microsoft for years in this area and Microsoft has finally answered.  For Outlook users, Microsoft has rewritten the Outlook client and all CRM forms actually are now embedded in Outlook instead of pretending like they are.  I have CRM 2011 beta installed and Pariveda will be looking to upgrade as soon as the path is released.  More to come as we begin to deploy this exciting new product.