What the heck is this all about?

Alex_Chow

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2102472,00.asp

Read the 2nd and 3rd paragraph and tell me you're not a little annoyed about this. MSFT is trying to limit Navision to 50 users?!

David_Singleton

I don't really see much change here. Microsoft have always pushed AX in the larger market, and NAV in the smaller market.

i don't think they will ever "Limit" NAV to 50 users, just that they will more "recommend" 50 user plus companies to go to AX.

Alex_Chow

David Singleton wrote:

I don't really see much change here. Microsoft have always pushed AX in the larger market, and NAV in the smaller market.

i don't think they will ever "Limit" NAV to 50 users, just that they will more "recommend" 50 user plus companies to go to AX.

I've seen NAV handle 60 - 80 user implementations without problems. I know there are a lot of implementations out there with 100+. Especially in Europe.

By releasing this statement, MSFT basically choked off a lot of opportunities for existing NAV resellers.

Joe_Mathis

I agree with David, it seems like they'll just recommend the upsell, rather than not make the sale at all.

More important though is the thought that all of the partners selling GP and SOL are going to throw their hats into the NAV arena. If Microsoft doesn't figure out some better training plans and courses, with revised licensing, we may end up a lot of unhappy customers as these new to Navision centers start trying to implement and customize it. That could equal harder sells for all partners as word of mouth about how terrible the experiances were.

I just hope for good training.

Joe

p.willemse6

We have several sites with 300 and 400 NAV users, even one with 1200 users. No prob, just good SQL tuning and not to many concurrent tasks...

Alex_Chow

jondoba wrote:

I agree with David, it seems like they'll just recommend the upsell, rather than not make the sale at all.

More important though is the thought that all of the partners selling GP and SOL are going to throw their hats into the NAV arena. If Microsoft doesn't figure out some better training plans and courses, with revised licensing, we may end up a lot of unhappy customers as these new to Navision centers start trying to implement and customize it. That could equal harder sells for all partners as word of mouth about how terrible the experiances were.

I just hope for good training.

Joe

If you really think NAV is hard to implement, you should try to implement AX. Then we'll seriously get a bunch of unhappy customers with their army of lawyers.

Recommending 50 user implementations to use AX is, in my opinion, overselling what the user really needs. Likewise, I don't (as do many partners) recommend Navision if they only have 2-3 users.

p.willemse6

This trend is already there in the Netherlands. Some customers, especially from new partners, are really unsattisfied about the difference between promised and realised solutions.... Main cause lack of knowledge and project experience...

David_Singleton

Alex, just to be clear, ... I absolutely agree with you. It makes no sense from a technical point of view to set limits by number of users, or even worse based on a companies revenue to determine which product they should implement.

This is more a marketing move aimed at enticing new Partners into the market, and giving them a simple plan so they can see which product they should sell.

Its not really connected to server performance or scalability of the product that is the concern for MS. Even for companies that sell both Axapta and NAV, it can sometimes be hard to determine which is the best fit. (I am sure you know that).

Even when Concorde and Navision used to compete, Daamgard always did great marketing in getting people to target into the bigger market than Navision, yet Navision still outsold it.

I think the only serious issue here, is that when an NSC goes to a potential client and recommends a 100 user Navision system, but the customer reads this "50 user" thing, and gets cold feet.

Joe_Mathis

Nah... it's not that hard.

Although it's relative...
NAV vs SAP or AX... NAV is waaaay easy.

NAV vs GP? NAV is harder.

What's hard is trying to implement ANY system that you don't know the first time and be on budget. That was where I was headed.

Joe

Alex_Chow

David Singleton wrote:

I think the only serious issue here, is that when an NSC goes to a potential client and recommends a 100 user Navision system, but the customer reads this "50 user" thing, and gets cold feet.

David, that's exactly my point. The main purpose of the statement was not to entice new partners to get in. It's aimed to give customers (and shareholders) the target market for each of the product lines they spent so much to aquire.

As I previously stated, the NAV resellers can kiss big implementations good bye.

Alex_Chow

jondoba wrote:

Nah... it's not that hard.

Although it's relative...
NAV vs SAP or AX... NAV is waaaay easy.

NAV vs GP? NAV is harder.

What's hard is trying to implement ANY system that you don't know the first time and be on budget. That was where I was headed.

Joe

You're right. It's just a matter to understanding the systems. Difficulty is relative.

However, there seems to be a bigger shortage of AX developers and implementors than there are NAV.

nunomaia

In Portugal the choice it’s easier. There aren’t GP and Axapta. So we only focus in one product, Navision.

Navision being recommended by MS only to customers with fewer than 50 clients depends in requirements and nothing else more.

David_Singleton

deadlizard wrote:

David Singleton wrote:

I think the only serious issue here, is that when an NSC goes to a potential client and recommends a 100 user Navision system, but the customer reads this "50 user" thing, and gets cold feet.

David, that's exactly my point. The main purpose of the statement was not to entice new partners to get in. It's aimed to give customers (and shareholders) the target market for each of the product lines they spent so much to aquire.

As I previously stated, the NAV resellers can kiss big implementations good bye.

In that respect, you are dead right unfortunately.

I guess even worse, will be clients wanting a 40 users system, asking "What happens when we get 10 more users". ](*,)

Alex_Chow

By stating that NAV is for companies with 50 users, I expect the average licenses for NAV will drop to about 10 - 20 users per implementation.

It's really too bad with the capabilities of Navision, it's only going to be used to about 5% of it's full potential.

Phenno

Does anybody knows what is AX market share compared to NAV? Here, in Balkan's countries there is no AX implementation (as far as I know), mainly NAV (a lot of them actually).

I suppose, it is only a matter of time wher AX will come here...

One thing is clear, if someone as big as MS is blowing wind in counterway, your ship will not float so fast. If some client read this document (and has 50+ users) he could easily say, thank you but give me AX cause MS recommend it.

Joe_Mathis

The people who put together the Directions sent an e-mail about this in the first place, and this is a follow-up e-mail.

This morning we sent you an e-mail making you aware of statements made by an analyst for the Gartner Group. We are pleased to share the response by Tami Reller, Corporate Vice President, Business Solutions Marketing Group:

Dear Partners,

I want to respond to the large number of emails I've received from you about yesterday's posting of inaccurate data about the "concurrent user" positioning for Dynamics NAV.

In a meeting with a group of NAV partners on Saturday, we agreed that we will begin publicly talking about Dynamics NAV as having installations of 2 to 250 users. We remain committed to our promise of updating to this positioning. It will take time for us to evangelize this broadly to all audiences, including press and analysts, but we do intend to make this a priority.

This afternoon we are meeting with the journalist who wrote the article to discuss this exact topic and introduce her to one of our customers who today has 250 users.

Earlier today we met with Gartner to request this correction and they have responded letting us know that they are contacting the journalist to get this corrected online.

One of our Dynamics NAV partners reached out directly to Yvonne Genovese of Gartner and received the following response which I'll share with you:

I understand your issue and appreciate your input. I think there are actually two issues:

1) I have talked to China (the author) about the quote and they actually issued a correction that said "around 50 users" rather than maximum. That's where we see most of the current users of NAV. The context of the question from China was "help me position the products for users" - and that's where Gartner positions it. In fact - we say "up to 100" users in one document. China misquoted and did do the retraction as I understand it.

2) The Gartner positioning vs. the Microsoft positioning may differ. Our positioning is based on client interaction while Microsoft's is likely based on where you want to grow it to be - as you state below.

I would also encourage you to look at the context of the whole article. Thanks again for your input.

We'll keep you updated on the status of the correction process.

Please know that we, and Gartner, are aggressively pursuing this issue.



Sincerely,

Tami

Joe

Alex_Chow

I guess more than a few people flooded Tami's inbox.

nunomaia

I guess that most of the partners didn't like those comments. [-(

p.willemse6

just keep in mind that this is purely the interpretation of Gartner, not a Microsoft statement....

Alex_Chow

p.willemse6 wrote:

just keep in mind that this is purely the interpretation of Gartner, not a Microsoft statement....

Yeah, but the average consumer who reads these articles won't be able to differentiate.

p.willemse6

yep...

p.willemse6

Short, first reaction of Microsoft:


Dear Partners,

I want to respond to the large number of emails I’ve received from you about yesterday’s posting of inaccurate data about the “concurrent user” positioning for Dynamics NAV.

In a meeting with a group of Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV partners at Convergence, we agreed that we will begin publicly talking about Microsoft Dynamics NAV as having installations of 2 to 250 users. We remain committed to our promise of updating to this positioning. It will take time for us to evangelize this broadly to all audiences, including press and analysts, but we do intend to make this a priority.

On Tuesday March 13th, we met with the journalist who wrote the article to discuss this exact topic and introduce her to one of our customers who today has 250 users.

We also met with Gartner earlier that day to request this correction and they have responded letting us know that they are contacting the journalist to get this corrected online. One of our Microsoft Dynamics NAV partners reached out directly to Yvonne Genovese of Gartner and received the following response which I’ll share with you:

I understand your issue and appreciate your input. I think there are actually two issues:

I have talked to China (the author) about the quote and they actually issued a correction that said “around 50 users” rather than maximum. That’s where we see most of the current users of NAV. The context of the question from China was “help me position the products for users” – and that’s where Gartner positions it. In fact – we say “up to 100” users in one document. China misquoted and did do the retraction as I understand it.
The Gartner positioning vs. the Microsoft positioning may differ. Our positioning is based on client interaction while Microsoft’s is likely based on where you want to grow it to be – as you state below.

I would also encourage you to look at the context of the whole article. Thanks again for your input.
We’ll keep you updated on the status of the correction process.

Please know that we, and Gartner, are aggressively pursuing this issue.

Sincerely,

Tami Reller

JasonC

That same eWeek article had NAV partners scrambling and providing Microsoft feedback on the 50 user issue, and GP and SL partner hammering Microsoft about the idea that GP and SL are dying.

Rumor has it Sage actually blasted an email to all their partners in North American linking to this eWeek piece and commenting on the demise of GP and SL.

NAV will be capped at 50 users
GP and SL are dying

Two silly, ridiculous rumors that as was pointed out earlier in this thread, even when corrected people will still read and believe.

Does anyone else find huge irony in the fact that Sage would be the first competitor to formally pounce on this? About 90% of their customers have 100 employees or less, the've got no presence above 50 users anyway. A flavor of Dynamics is dying? This time the rumor was GP and SL, next time it might be NAV. It's not true, but even it if was, based on the relative R&D spend of the two companies a Microsoft product in maintenance mode would still be getting several times the level of investment of any Sage product.

Alex_Chow

All caused by a silly article that took things out of context.

Wait a minute, where have I see this type of thing before? Oh, EVERYWHERE!

DenSter

It's deliberate misinformation if you ask me, nobody in the know at Microsoft would ever say anything close to the claims in that article. Put something like that in your publication, get partners and customers in a tiffy and create a buzz for your publication. "hey look at all these interesting articles" :-k

JasonC

Which perhaps explains why neither story has been corrected online, even though both Reller and Genovese have indicated they would be (or at least the accurate information has been given to the reporter).

Imagine the number of clicks those stories are and will be getting, just from the Sage channel.