NAV version percentages

Peter_List · 2008-05-16

Hi,
Do you have a qualified guess regarding how many percent of customers that are using a specific NAV version?

NAV 5? NAV 4? NAV 3? NAV 2? Any guess is welcome....

kine · 2008-05-16

Such a statistics cannot be done, you can have only statistics about version sold, but not used, because you can upgrade and you do not need to report it anywhere, it means you need special research to find these data. :-k

David_Singleton · 2008-05-16

Peter List wrote:

Hi,
Do you have a qualified guess regarding how many percent of customers that are using a specific NAV version?
NAV 5? NAV 4? NAV 3? NAV 2?
Any guess is welcome....

Did you know that 62.81% of all statistics are made up randomly?

tinoruijs · 2008-05-16

David Singleton wrote:

Did you know that 62.81% of all statistics are made up randomly?

Do you read Dilbert, David?

http://dilbert.com/2008-05-08/

David_Singleton · 2008-05-16

tinoruijs wrote:

David Singleton wrote:

Did you know that 62.81% of all statistics are made up randomly?

Do you read Dilbert, David?

http://dilbert.com/2008-05-08/

Yep.

Alex_Chow · 2008-05-16

David Singleton wrote:

Did you know that 62.81% of all statistics are made up randomly?

I thought it was 62.85%?

David_Singleton · 2008-05-16

Alex Chow wrote:

David Singleton wrote:

Did you know that 62.81% of all statistics are made up randomly?

I thought it was 62.85%?

Actually it used to be 70%, but slowly people are getting more conservative.

Peter_List · 2008-05-19

I thought that you could give your estimate based on your own customer base. If enough people post we can start to get a better overview...

It would, of course, still be very uncertain.
Maybe I should just catch up on my Dilbert reading. Dogbert may have some NAV insights

David_Singleton · 2008-05-19

Peter List wrote:

I thought that you could give your estimate based on your own customer base. If enough people post we can start to get a better overview...

It would, of course, still be very uncertain.
Maybe I should just catch up on my Dilbert reading. Dogbert may have some NAV insights

Actually the phrase which goes something like "67% of all statistics are made up on the spot" is very old, I think there are references back to the 1930's when it became popular.

Point is that there are about 60-70,000 NAV databases out there. Even if you get 30 replies here, it won't dent the correct numbers, AND it will be skewed, since most people replying will be new Navision users, so you will get most people saying 4 and 5.

Peter_List · 2008-05-19

I agree, if end user post to say that they use version X, then the data would be skewed towards the later versions.

I was hoping that NAV partners with a substantial customer base would post. This would give a more accurate distribution.

tinoruijs · 2008-05-19

Peter List wrote:

I was hoping that NAV partners with a substantial customer base would post. This would give a more accurate distribution.

Would be nice if the big solution centers do that.

David_Singleton · 2008-05-19

Peter List wrote:

I agree, if end user post to say that they use version X, then the data would be skewed towards the later versions.

I was hoping that NAV partners with a substantial customer base would post. This would give a more accurate distribution.

I think the big question is "why do you want the information". If its just get get a feel for whats out there, its fine, but if you are looking at marketing an Add-On (which I gather is what you do) then this could be dangerous.

Consider firstly that the big NSCs probably have their own in house Add-Ons anyway, so they probably wont be interested in yours. Instead what you need to look at is the market you want to target.

Lets say you have an interface from 2.60 to mobile devices, then you have a niche market, and basically there will be plenty of customers for you to target. So really you need to know "how many 2.60 clients could use my products". If you have a mobile interface to 5.00 then so do many others, so the competition is higher, and you need different marketing. So I think you would be better off directly asking "who is interested in what we have to offer"

anyway having said all that lets take a wild guess.

There are a couple of factors we need to take into account. 1/ is that in many countries Microsoft recommend customers NOT to mix versions. i.e. they say not to run 3.70 objects on 4.00 executables. 2/ because of the delay iin 5.00 in many countries, and the way that support was pushed, a number of customer stopped support at the end of 3.70 or beginning of 4.00. For this reason we will see a lot of databases with 3.60 or 3.70 objects running on 4.00 objects as well as many running on 3.70 executables that you would expect to be on 4.00 or 5.00. This is significant with SQL, since SQL is not ideal on 3.70 executables.

Thus my guess would be that the largest object base out there would be wither 3.60 or 3.70. 4.00 coming in second.

For executables I think again 3.70 would be highest, with 5.00 coming in second.

There will be many companies on 260 objects that have been given a VERY WRONG impression that they are "too modified to upgrade". (Which is of course not true but...). For the same illogical reasons, many of them will still be running on 2.xx executables.

In terms of object / executable combinations, I would guess that the most common is 4.00 objects on 5.00 executables.

(Oh and I completely made all this up, but its based on my experience and gut feeling with what I have seen out there).

Peter_List · 2008-05-19

Thanks for your input David!
I hope others will chip in with their "gut feelings".

Reason for asking: I am performing a light weight analysis of the customer base for different NAV versions for one of my customers. They are considering developing a new add-on.

The information is also very good background knowledge and my idea was that it could be used by many forum readers (resulting in many posts).

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