I'm glad to see that Roberto Andreoli has leave me a great answer on his blog by explaining his 50-30-20 theory.
On his previous post about the possible Microsoft leadership in the business application's world, I said him that "Microsoft has a great platform expecially on the ERP side (AX and NAV are products so customizable that can fits every customer's needs). When their future releases will be more integrated into the .NET world, I think that the primary role on the market will be for sure.
However, the CRM platform is a step below the ERP. Microsoft CRM actually doesn't cover all the business needs (we see this with lots of customers) and it's core platform has lots of "walls" that can't be customized.
I hope on a big step with "Tytan"... 
".
I want to be here more precise about my previous consideration. After many years of project management work I can agree with Roberto by saying that
- There's no CRM solution in the market that can fit exactly all the customer needs (and this apply not only to CRM but in general to all the business applications).
- When architecturing or proposing a solution for a customer, you don't have to start by saying what your actual solution can do but you've to listen to his business requirements and you've to start thinking to the right solution for his needs.
"Talk with me about your business needs" is always the first step that I do when I start to architecturing a business solution. So... why I've said that MS CRM is a step below to the MS ERP family?
When saying these words, my focus was in terms of platform customization and flexibility to be adaptable to every business needs.
Microsoft ERP family (NAV for example) has a great chance to become a possible market leader because it's totally customizable to the core. During years of different projects, I've always found the best solution for a customer by modeling the ERP as his business model needs. Obviously, in order to create a powerful platform, I'm always open to consider and to propose integration with other different platforms (MOSS, Office, .NET custom applications etc.) but this is always an optional choice: the business requirements can be satisfied only with a customization to the main application (the ERP is this example).
What about MS CRM?
Microsoft CRM is a great and flexible platform and I totally agree when Roberto say that "Our CRM can be considered a great CRM Application Framework where I can build and realize the CRM Business Model for my customers." but the key point of this discussion is exactly his next sentence: "If some functionalities are not covered by standard Dynamics CRM Functionalities I am sure that I will find another Microsoft product natively integrated with our CRM.".
This is exactly where a customer doesn't want to come... if I buy a platform that costs, I want that this platform will be natively adaptable to my business needs! In my experience with MS CRM, this is not always so true... there are many cases where by customizing the CRM system (internally or with custom .NET code) you can satisfy the customer, but also many cases where the customizations that you can do to the platform itself can't be a satisfaction for the customer.
Unfortunately, MS CRM has some "walls" that you can't modify... some examples? This little list is only what I can remember now (these are topics that comes from customers):
- Email management during standard campaigns: what about email templates?
- Why I can't create an email template from a word document (embedding images that doesn't have an HTTP address)?
- Why I can't customize the wizard that apperars when you create a new activity (task, appointment, email etc)?
- Why lookups are not filtered (and the developer must do an hard work in order to have a filtered lookup that works)?
- Why "Advanced Find" is not always so flexible? (do you remember my post here?)
- Why some system entities can't be related to custom entities?
- Why I can't have an editable grid? (forget third party controls here please...).
- Why there's not a great mobile client that can work online and offline on the Pocket Pc?
Let's stop...
I hope to be clear... I don't want to say that MS CRM is not a great product, because it's not what I think. I've said many times in the past that MS CRM is a powerful platform where you can start to model your CRM business (maybe it's the best of the market in terms of customization's possibilities because it's totally .NET oriented) but surely in the actual version it lacks of some basic features that many customer want without paying a developer.
What about "Tytan"? I hope a lot on this new version... MS CRM has surely a great future, it's a "promising boy" that have the chance to become a "genious" in the near future... 
Roberto, thanks for your response and... I hope to continue this discussion with you, maybe in Microsoft Italy near a coffee machine... 
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