Critical Areas of Knowledge for those who install Microsoft CRM

As usual, Microsoft surveyed many partners involved in CRM 1.x implementation.
And following areas are the skills set that CRM implementer should posses to successfully install Microsoft CRM.

1. Deployment Issues
Knowledge of the variations of domain topology and placement of servers and users
supported with Microsoft CRM. Also knowledge of customer's hardware and software
requirement based on:
a. how many users will use CRM.
b. level of downtime the customer will accept
c. Response time required from the Web servier
d. Amount of data expected to be created.
e. Customer's budget
f. Current server hardware capacity and software installed.

2. Active Directory
3. DNS
4. SQL Server
Implementer should able to install SQL server, setup a database maintenance plan,
create indexes, create jobs, move SQL Logs to a different drive, to select an
appropriate RAID configuration, and establish or recommend a backup stategy.
5. IIS
Implementer should able to publish the Microsoft CRM Web site through a firewall
such as ISA Server so that Microsoft CRM can be accessed externally. Also he
able to understand of thte appropriate IIS configuration settings for Microsoft
CRM, which is needed if Microsoft CRM Web pages do not load.
6. Microsoft Exchange
Implementer should able to know where to install the Microsoft CRM Exchange Email
Router, to verify email flow to and from Microsoft CRM. Also he should able to
support an Exchange server in a different domain.
7. Microsoft CRM Outlook Client
Implementer should consider Network capacity, stages, dependencies, benchmarks
and limitations of the Outlook client synchronization process over the network
capacity.