Avidian Prophet CRM Review
by R. Sanders
(St. Louis, MO)
Avidian Prophet CRM has dual personalities. From the user perspective it is easy to use and Avidian provides excellent support.
From a technical perspective Prophet CRM is clumsy and generally not ready for client server environments. In a ten user install 50% of the client installs failed. Failed Prophet client installs can require many hours and sometimes days to resolve.
Avidian recommends separate hardware for the Prophet Server software, but do not clarify this point. Perhaps because the Prophet Server application hogs the hardware and would require multiple shut downs of a production server in order to install.
If you backup servers to tape, and put the Prophet Server on separate hardware you will also need another backup solution for the new hardware.
In order to install the client, you must remove domain policies and grant the user administrative privileges.
It is not as tightly integrated with Outlook/Exchange as one would think. An Outlook profile can follow a user to a different machine, but not so with Prophet. For example, the license only applies to one specific user plus the machine. A valid user cannot use Prophet on a different machine even when the Prophet client is installed on the second machine.
Prophet CRM would work OK in a small peer-peer network, but it is just not suitable for larger client/server domains.
