Where is Dynamics NAV is headed ?

radianis

Hi All,

This question appear because there is some confusion in Microsoft on where they are planning to do with NAV. They have many information regarding this, but I have a bad hunch that Navision will no longer Navision on what we see today.

Microsoft intention to get navision is only its customer based. How about if it is not open and not easy to customize ?

Any ideas ?

cheers,


Radianis

ara3n

Here we go again. Here is a link that you can start reading.

http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8896

Oh SP2 for navision is comming out at on 1st of April. And I'm not fooling anyone.

8)

Waldo

there are only bugfixes in SP2 ... or should I say "enhancements"

radianis

The link is for technical issue, how about functional issue ?

Is microsoft planning to have all the same functionalities with the new application convergence ? They don't planning to have a new application with new functionalities, do they ?

I am asking this, because I am afraid on where the microsoft will go. I will consider SAP fo the next year because of their unconfused position in the ERP market. Even for Oracle is the same with Microsoft, try to grab everything without telling us what they want. Or perhaps one of you know already what the microsoft want ?

Cheers,

Radianis

Waldo

I attended the 5.0 briefing in Denmark last wednesday (but I'm bound to an NDA, so can't say much).

I can say that MS definitally knows where it's going. Very much functionality in 5.0 is enhanced and improved.

Everything looks very promising, I must say ... .

radianis

How can we know if you can't say much ..

Everything is still blank just like before ... ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

Waldo

Sorry ...

ara3n

We just have to wait another 4 months to get some info from MS? So just keep waiting. When will the NDA be removed?

Waldo

Come on, guys, have a little faith in Microsoft.

They are working on a great product release. Don't expect them to give away all details. This wouldn't be wise for competition-reasons, you know ... .

:-$

ara3n

So when will the NDA be removed Waldo?

Waldo

Let me see if there is some kind of "expiration date" on the NDA, but I honestly doubt it ...

DenSter

I'm under NDA as well, you can tell me

Waldo

You're MVP, I should be asking you

radianis

How can I tell the truth to my prospects or existing clients if the biggest Navision forum in world (Mibuso is it ? or there is another one ??..) can not answer that questions... ](*,) ](*,)


Radianis

Waldo

If you have prospects or existing clients, that means you are a partner.

Your Microsoft PAM should know all the details necessary to give to your customers/prospects. With all the respect, but your info (as a salesperson) should never come from any kind of forum. Even a well-kept high-quality forum like MiBuSo... but that's only my honest opinion.

Contact your PAM. He knows what has to be done in situations like this.

radianis

But the problem is the PAM (or perhaps all salesperson) always say good thing.. .

Saying that you will go to 'a very beautiful jungle' seeing in very far away and no need to worry. Then when it is near the jungle, he said 'you need this, this (knife, etc) because you are in the real jungle (many snake, lion, etc)'..

But that's not including me because I have been a consultant also O:)

That's why I am looking for second opinion in this high quality forum, am I right ? =D> =D> Can I depend on you ? O:) O:)

I need to tell my client the truth even that would be a bad news... :oops: or perhaps there is no bad news ... :P :P

cheers,


Radianis

Waldo

Yeah well ... I'm feeling some negative vibes ... I'm afraid that I'm not the one that is going to be able to help you at this point. [-(

kine

Of course, you know how it is with new products etc... not usable till SP2... :-)

radianis

Or perhaps I should ask Gartner (an independent IT research institution) and find literatures about it..

Too bad can not find an answer yet ...

Sorry fo the wrong post... :-k :-k


Radianis

radianis

Hi All,

After having pesimism for not having the right information. I search to google and find interesting research publication by Gartner regarding my question. Thank's to google.. =D> =D>

Here is the topic "Management Update: Microsoft Sets a Midmarket Vision,
but Its Execution Will Take Some Time"

Here is the address .. http://kayvaan.typepad.com/softwaremcco ... market.pdf

I hope people in this forum still have an open mind attitude...

Cheers,


Radianis

radianis

Hi All,

I have another interesting article about Dynamics from Redmond Magazine (http://redmondmag.com/features/article. ... ialsID=562)

========
Microsoft Dynamics
All of those product launches don't touch on one of Microsoft's most ambitious areas for 2006 -- the rebranding of the Microsoft Business Solutions finance, accounting and customer relationship management software into the Microsoft Dynamics family. The company announced this process in September 2005 and got it underway a few months later. Already generally available are Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, which was formerly Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains; Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0; and Microsoft Dynamics SL 6.5 (formerly Solomon). All shipped late enough in the year that the bulk of their rollout is occurring in the first half of 2006. With some of those products, certain language versions are continuing to dribble out well into 2006.

[Click on image for larger view.]

Later this month, Microsoft will provide a lot more detail on the Microsoft Dynamics roadmap at the Microsoft Convergence Conference. Through the rest of 2006, the Microsoft Business Solutions division has two more products to re-release as Microsoft Dynamics. The company will turn Axapta into Microsoft Dynamics AX and Navision into Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Once all the products are relaunched under the Dynamics brand, Microsoft's plans call for a more severe "wave 2," which will consolidate the diverse finance and accounting products the company collected through acquisition into a single product. The best features of Dynamics GP, SL, AX and NAV will merge into one larger product, with job roles, rather than product version, determining what functionality is turned on. While Microsoft Dynamics ERP is floating around, the über-product doesn't have a formal name yet. This all assumes it doesn't go the way of Microsoft's ill-fated Jupiter initiative to combine BizTalk, Commerce and Content Management servers. In any case, current plans are for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to continue to stand alone.
=======

So it is true that navision will no longer exist in 2008 ?

It will be replaced by new ERP (not yet named) in 2008 ?

Can we say that Navision will still live until 2008 ?


Cheers,


Radianis

kine

One thing is change of name and another is change of product. Do not mix that... :-) there will be still the "Navision" but with young brother (sister) "Microsoft Dynamics NAV" :-) 8)

Of course the young NAV will grow up and somewhen will replace the old grandpa Navision...

ara3n

which one is which again Kine? Also when will the NDA be lifted.

Something I was thinking about that Nav 5 will be probably released at same time as Windows Vista, which is being released in November.

Savatage

I beta tested Vista and I put on a pretty decent computer but it was sloooow. I guess you really need a new rocket machine to get the full performance benefits (if there are any).

but it looks nice :whistle:

ara3n

Was it a recent beta version? Also what kind of video card did you have?

kine

:-) I tested Navision 4.00SP1 on the Vista but there are some problems with table headings (background is white, cells are white, there is no line between table headings (column labels...) etc. and the SQL option is not working because the version of MDAC is recognized as old one (the dll has another system of version no. in the Vista beta right now...) - I am testing the Vista on my AMD64 (Sempron) with GF6600GT and performance is good. Of course, I am not using it as my primary OS yet (still problems with some drivers)...

which one is which again Kine? Also when will the NDA be lifted.

NDA will be lifted only for part which Microsoft himself will release. For example that the Nav 5.00 will support 3-tier architecture is public. And this part will be the young brother, rest is the old Navision... :-)

Shenpen

Well, I think even MSFT does not really know where Navision is actually heading, and this goes back even to even before the merge: everything after NF2.6 is nothing but a series of half-hearted, "maybe it works, maybe not" attempts.

NF2.6 was the typical "do one thing and do it right" product: amazingly good for accountants from every possible viewpoint from UI to functionality and the message was clear that for everybody else add-ons are needed.

After 2.6, the long series of half-hearted attempts started:

- they added a WMS that was not completely integrated in 3.6 to the other parts of Navision, and for most users it was unnecessarily complicated so they had to add simplified versions for it later, in 3.7

- they added a manufacturing area without giving the message to partners that it's only suitable for a narrow subset of manufacturer prospects: those who plan with a pull-system instead of a push-system, those who calculate capacities in a typical machine industry way and no other ways etc.

- they added functionality to the main menu in 3.7 that did not show menu items that one did not have licence or user rights to use, and it was a very good idea but removed in 4.0 with the new menu system

- adding an amazingly buggy Business Analytics we spent weeks to get working, without any success, and now the rumour is that it will be dropped

- adding Business Notifications where you still need to write about the same amount of code to notify your warehouse that an order has been relesed than with the SMPT OCX for free, so it's completely useless unless you use it for sending marketing spam to your clients on new products or something like that, so it's mostly useless

- adding Gantt server to manufacturing in a way that it is completely impossible to set an operation start time to exactly 11:00 with so it's mostly useless

- from 3.7 to 4.0 , besides these, adding only a marginal, cosmetic amount of functionality improvements while adding technological improvements that don't work correctly (XMLports, for example - only Unicode for exporting, and completely unusable error messages when trying to import duplicate records), while leaving wide functionality gaps (approval workflows, mandatory fields, field level security, automatic running of adjust costs - item entries without using a client licence or hacking NAS, etc. etc.) without even a roadmap on when these will be added (yeah, there are add-ons, but you can't sell 5 add-ons for each project)

On the other hand, I can understand that under the hoods a lot of things were repaired in 4.0 - Inventory Adjusment completely redesigned, Commerce Portal/Gateway simplified, reversing postings made possible, so I don't claim they don't work hard. They work really hard to clean up the mess inherited from the last 15 years of Navision A/S. I apprectiate that.

What I claim is that they don't plan, don't plan on the tactical level. They do plan on the strategic level, I mean all this stuff about moving into .NET, merging four products into one, role-based user experience, OK, it's a strategic plan. But on the tactical level, on the functionality level they seem to be not planning at all, just half-heartedly throwing in some semi-finished functionality and let's see what happens. Business Analytics especially pissed me off, we sold it, fought with it for weeks and still not working, I think customer is thinking we partners are complete morons. That happens if you release semi-finished, never-really thought-out functionality.

If any of you happens to meet Doug Burgum please tell him that they need to do tactical[/n] planning - need to decide where Navision needs to be in 3-5 years from a purely business functionality viewpoint and then go into that direction steadfastly, instead of of misguiding us partners with half-heartedly releasing semi-serious new functionality.

ara3n

Something that has been on my mind, is that when I'm at customer and I watch them work, I can't help myself and add small, minor changes to the objects that make their lives easy. I don't know how navision developers look for the gaps and release the improvements. What they did is start releasing big bug fixes SP1 etc. Instead of minor releases as they used to do. This is because MS told them so. This is because how MS does things. And guess what, Just recently MS decided to go the other way around and release incremental changes.

Captain_DX4

People really shouldn't be selling based on the future. Sell the product for what it is now. If it is a good customer fit, then it's a good fit.

Because it belongs to Microsoft, NAV isn't going to shrivel up and blow away. It's going to be a good product in their lineup for some years.

If anything we've learned in the evaluation from Shenpen, sometimes products will grow up like an awkward teenager... sometimes not always sure what they eventually want to be.

However, the core functionality that we've all come to know and love hasn't been eradicated, so I'm not expecting to wake up next year to find NAV 5.0 has suddenly decided to stop handling Inventory, so a good customer fit today should mean a safe product fit tomorrow.

Waldo

Amen!

davmac1

Convergence will have its first European meeting in Munich in November. All the main Navision people will be there - so it will be worth going to if you could not make it to the USA meeting.