After a four month of beta program, Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 2011 Online, has been released to customers.

As per an article in CNET, the CRM software, is being released first as a hosted service through Microsoft (News - Alert), hits 40 different markets in 41 languages initially, with an on-premises and partner-hosted version of the software to follow on February 28.

"One reason we do that [has to do] with the online environment," Brad Wilson, Dynamics General Manager is reported to have told CNET.

"We run our own systems, and we have a lower amount of testing required because we are actually running the service in our data centers so we know exactly what configuration is going in," CNET while quoting Wilson said.

Even though it's the same software, the company goes through some extra steps to make sure everything works once it's in the wild.

Wilson said that when the company releases it out to the customers and to the partner hosts, it (the company) does additional testing because of the wide range of configurations that a customer or a partner host might have.

According to CNET, Microsoft as part of its initial launch has cut the price on the service from $44 per user per month down to $33 per user per month, as well as put forth its "Cloud CRM For Less" program, which has the company offering cash rebates on a per-user basis for companies that switch over from competing Salesforce or Oracle (News - Alert) CRM tools.

Wilson reportedly told CNET that it was too early to share data on how many rebates Microsoft had doled out so far, but said that as part of the launch announcement this morning, the company would have endorsements from companies that had recently made the switch from competitors like Oracle.

Wilson requested the users that are still using Microsoft's beta release to move to the final release product in order to get full support.

"Now we're in the process of converting those existing beta customers onto full production trials, and then hopefully [moving] them on to be full, paid subscribers of the system," Wilson said. The company stopped taking beta sign-ups for the online product last month.

Much like Microsoft's Office 365, which is currently undergoing its own beta test leading up to a public release, Wilson painted Dynamics CRM 2011 Online's big benefit as its capability to scale up or down depending on who is using it.