Microsoft CRM Products - On Premise

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 comes in three deployment options with multiple editions or offerings related to each.

Microsoft CRM On Premise
  
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is available as a traditional perpetual software license that you can buy directly from Microsoft, through a retail outlet or from a Microsoft Certified Partner. As is true with most on premise client-based business software, you must provide and maintain the hardware that runs the system. Due to this factor, you should include the cost to setup the infrastructure and maintain it, as well as handle the administration of the CRM product itself as part of the total cost of ownership (TCO). Pricing is based on a number of variables including the edition you buy, number of users you license, bundling options included with your purchase and who you buy it from. It also requires licensing the Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, which has its own costs and constraints on how it is deployed and configured.

Free: Complete Report – Microsoft CRM Exposed

With the on premise options of MS CRM 4.0, you have the ability to integrate the CRM system with applications behind your corporate firewall that may not otherwise be possible through a hosted solution. There are also benefits of integrating with your own Exchange server and leveraging Microsoft development tools such as Visual Studio and .NET framework to develop your own applications leveraging data contained in MS CRM. Be forewarned though that doing this does require you to make changes to Exchange and Active Directory Environments, which has been cause for concern with CIOs who have wrestled with unwinding such changes in the past. The drawbacks of an on premise model are largely the significant differences in upfront costs for the licensing, one-time infrastructure investments, and then the ongoing maintenance costs that are part of the burden of owning any on premise solution.

Free: Complete Report – Microsoft CRM Exposed