Microsoft is little shy of applauding the ratio of investment to actual value delivered by Dynamics CRM 4.0. In this regard, the Redmond-based company, together with Intel, performed a CRM scalability benchmark which revealed that the solution could scale to in excess of 50,000 concurrent users for hardware costs that are 80% smaller than rival products. Running on an infrastructure with Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 sill managed to deliver subsecond response times, even if it was dealing with a high-volume workload from 50,000 concurrent users.

“Our business strategy is to make CRM technology that is simple, flexible and affordable for companies of all sizes,” explained Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “In this benchmark, we’ve proved that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can handle extreme workloads with minimal investment in hardware and a reduced impact to the environment. We’re once again redefining the price-to-value equation in the CRM market, across all deployment models.”

Of course, Microsoft did not miss the opportunity to take a jab at the competition. The victim this time was Oracle Siebel Release 8.0. According to the Redmond-based company, a performance test of Oracle Siebel Release 8.0 from October 2008 indicated that the product scaled only to 14,000 users, handling 1.6 million daily transactions. However, the Sun hardware necessary to run Oracle Siebel Release 8.0 is synonymous with an investment of $150,000. By comparison, Microsoft Dynamics CRM performed over 2.9 million daily transactions, while the underlying hardware came with a price tag of just $35,000.

“Intel and Microsoft engineers worked together to optimize Microsoft Dynamics CRM for new Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based servers with intelligent server technology capabilities and Intel Solid State Drives (SSDs),” said Boyd Davis, general manager, Intel Server Platforms Group. “This collaboration led to exceptional economic scalability and responsiveness results, which can enable companies of all sizes to deploy enterprise-class business solutions at a fraction of what these kinds of solutions have traditionally cost.”