• Illustration: MBS ERP Roadmap at a Glance—Updated
• Illustration: Other MBS Releases Planned

Despite organizational restructuring and the outsourcing of Solomon development, Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) has delivered a number of incremental releases across its product line in 2004. However, other planned releases and feature enhancements, particularly in the group’s newer products, have been shelved or delayed. Schedule delays in mature products such as Axapta could prove an annoyance to existing customers, and delays in updates to newer products could directly impact adoption, since those updates tend to address limitations that have stifled sales.

ERP Releases Roughly on Track

Microsoft planned to update each of the core MBS enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the second half of calendar year 2004. As it has done in the past, MBS will make available lower-priced Standard Editions of Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon when it releases those products’ full-featured editions (which are referred to simply as Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon).

Microsoft’s progress against those plans is as follows (for an illustration of the revised MBS ERP product roadmap, see "MBS ERP Roadmap at a Glance—Updated"):

Great Plains 8.0 was delivered as planned in June 2004. The release is a significant update that contains more than 100 feature enhancements. Small Business Manager (SBM) 8.0, which is based on Great Plains 8.0 and targets very small businesses, will appear by the end of 2004. (For more information on Great Plains 8.0, see "Great Plains Improves Steadily" on page 18 of the Aug. 2004 Update.)

Solomon 6.0 is on track for release in the third quarter of 2004 despite recent news that the product’s development was moving out-of-house. (For more information, see "Reorganization, Outsourcing at MBS" on page 27 of the July 2004 Update.)

The release will improve the product’s already strong project management features and include enhancements aimed at government contractors and construction companies.

Navision 4.0, planned for the third quarter of 2004, will likely ship closer to the end of 2004. Microsoft has suggested that customers will get user interface improvements, overall improvements in product performance, easier setup and installation, and better XML import and export capabilities.

Axapta 4.0, previously expected toward the end of 2004, will now likely ship in the second quarter of 2005. The release will offer enhanced functionality for manufacturing and for project and service management.

Other Plans Morphing

MBS plans for calendar year 2004 also called for updates to most of the other products in its portfolio. (For a roadmap of other releases planned by MBS, see the illustration "Other MBS Releases Planned".)

The status of those plans is as follows:

MSCRM. MBS has delivered on plans to integrate the current edition of its customer relationship management product (MSCRM 1.2) with Great Plains 7.5 and Solomon. Plans to integrate MSCRM 1.2 with Great Plains 8.0 are underway; however, an availability date has not been announced.. MSCRM 1.2 is currently available in nine languages, as planned. Microsoft has indicated that it will add more languages in the third quarter of 2004.

MSCRM 2.0, which Microsoft has suggested will improve the product’s marketing capabilities (such as management of marketing campaigns) and service management features (scheduling and dispatching service calls, for example), was originally slated for the first quarter of 2005 and is now expected in the second quarter of 2005.

Microsoft Business Portal (MBP). MBS updated its product for browser-based access to Great Plains and Solomon data in Feb. 2004, moving the product’s underlying technology to Windows SharePoint Services. A second MBP release (MBP 2.5) in 2004, originally planned for the third quarter, will probably slip into the fourth quarter of the year. The release will add a new self-service application for project management among other features.

(For more information on MBP 2.0, see "Business Portal Moves to WSS" on page 18 of the Mar. 2004 Update.)

Microsoft Business Network (MBN). A new version of MBS’s trading network (MBN 2.0) for small and mid-size companies was originally slated for release in the second quarter of 2004; this release could slip into the second quarter of 2005. However, one planned MBN 2.0 feature—integration of the MBN with EDI-based networks—was delivered in July 2004 through arrangements with partners Inovis and Internet Commerce Corporate (ICC), which operate EDI-based value added networks. Inovis will offer support for standards such as Internet EDI, which is popular with retailers; ICC supports the EDI/EC standard, which is widely used in the automotive industry.

Microsoft Business Solutions for Analytics—FRx. MBS delivered, as planned, an update to its financial reporting application (FRx 6.7) in the first quarter of 2004. FRx 6.7 works with Great Plains 8.0 and will also work with Solomon 6.0 when that product ships. Integration of FRx 6.7 and Axapta 4.0 is still a possibility but depends on the latter product’s ship schedule. However, Microsoft has not announced plans to integrate FRx and Navision.

(For more information about FRx 6.7, see "FRx 6.7 Adds a Report Manager" on page 18 of the May 2004 Update.)

Microsoft Business Solutions for Analytics—Forecaster. There are no plans to update the Forecaster budgeting and planning application in 2004; however, MBS has delivered on plans to make Forecaster’s wizard-based ExpressLink feature, which allows automatic import of general ledger data, available for Axapta. This capability was previously available for Great Plains and Solomon. Microsoft has not specified when the ExpressLink feature will work with Navision.

Retail Management System (RMS). Microsoft shelved plans to update and localize its suite of retail point-of-sale and inventory management applications in 2004. Instead, the company will focus on a more significant release (RMS 2.0) that is scheduled for the first half of 2006.

Resources

The MBS product line is described at www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions/default.mspx.

Information presented in this article updates information previous published in "Business Solutions Roadmap 2004" on page 11 of the Mar. 2004 Update.