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| Business Solutions ERP Roadmap 2005 |
| Apr. 18, 2005 |
A series of incremental releases planned through 2007 will drive consistency across Microsoft's four enterprise resource planning (ERP) product lines via role-based user interfaces modeled on Outlook, integration with SQL Server, and the use of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) for core portal technology. Longer term, the company has hinted that consolidation of its ERP lines remains a goal, although timeframes are vague and Microsoft has not explained how customers and partners will move existing ERP data and custom solutions to a consolidated code base. Consequently, Microsoft's ERP products will remain distinct, and functional overlaps among them will persist for several years. Overlaps Persist The core four products in the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) portfolio—Axapta, Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon—offer small and mid-size businesses support for financial accounting, tracking of intercompany transactions (such as orders and payments), inventory management, and managing other company resources, such as personnel. Within each product, distinct applications—called "modules"—provide these capabilities and are organized according to business functions, such as manufacturing or accounting. Each product also includes developer tools for building custom modules, creating custom solutions, or integrating other business applications. Microsoft uses the term "ERP" to refer to these four products and distinguish them from other MBS products such as Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (MSCRM). Although the four ERP products overlap functionally, market targets, geographies, and functional emphases differ. Navision and Axapta are strong in Europe, and Great Plains has support in North America, for example. Great Plains emphasizes financial accounting functionality, and Solomon places greater focus on project accounting. (A long-term effort to consolidate these overlapping code bases—referred to as Project Green—was reworked in 2004 and presented at Convergence 2005, Microsoft's annual conference for MBS customers and partners. For more information on Project Green, see the sidebar "What of Project Green?".) The company considers the market served by these products strategic for several reasons. Most important, it sees a large, fragmented market that could offset waning revenue growth in its more traditional product lines—Windows and Office. Competitive forces also play a role. IBM and Oracle continue to target mid-size businesses more aggressively, threatening the mid-market share of products such as SQL Server, while SAP is retooling its enterprise-class ERP software to better suit the needs of smaller companies. (For a chart summarizing functions, target markets, and customer adoption of the MBS ERP products, see "MBS ERP Products at a Glance".) Consistency Drives Midterm Releases MBS will deliver a series of incremental releases to all four ERP products through 2007. (For a graphical overview of the MBS ERP releases planned through 2006, see the illustration "MBS ERP Roadmap 2005 at a Glance".) In addition to ongoing refinement of each product's core business management features, these releases are centered on four main design themes:
Some of these themes, which MBS Vice President Doug Burgum referred to as "Project Green wave one" at Convergence 2005, have surfaced in recent releases. For example, in 2004, Great Plains and Navision shipped new versions with UI updates that resemble the Outlook multipane client. In addition, Solomon and Great Plains have already moved to WSS as their underlying portal technology. (A module called the Microsoft Business Portal provides portal capabilities for Solomon and Great Plains.) Axapta Axapta, acquired in Microsoft's July 2002 purchase of Danish software company Navision, is Microsoft's highest-end ERP product and is aimed at multinational companies with 100 to 5,000 employees (or divisions of larger companies with 100 to 5,000 employees in the division) and complex manufacturing or distribution needs. Axapta has broad multilanguage support and ships in more than 30 languages and more than 30 country-specific versions. The product has a smaller customer base than the other MBS ERP products but is the company's fastest-growing. During FY'05 (which ended June 30, 2005), Axapta grew its customer base by over 25% and the number of authorized resellers by nearly 30%. Some 4,800 customers have adopted the product, and it is sold by about 1,100 partners. The following Axapta releases are scheduled within the next 18 to 24 months: Axapta 3.0 SP4. Axapta 3.0 SP4, scheduled for the first half of 2005, will include a number of bug fixes and be accompanied by the release of Axapta for Life Sciences. Axapta for Life Sciences is a special edition of the product that adds features designed to help companies in the life sciences industry (pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers, for instance) reduce the overhead of complying with government regulations. Report packs for Axapta 3.0. Also in the first half of 2005, Microsoft plans to release a SQL Server Reporting Services report pack for Axapta. Similar to the Great Plains report pack released in Mar. 2005, Axapta's report pack could kick-start the creation of new Axapta reporting infrastructures built on top of Reporting Services. The Axapta report pack further grows the list of Microsoft applications that use Reporting Services for report management and distribution and reflects a Microsoft strategy to converge on Reporting Services as its cross-product reporting engine. The pack will contain six sample reports, including sales, manufacturing, and purchase order planning. Axapta 4.0. Microsoft announced in Jan. 2005 that Axapta 4.0 had been delayed. Originally scheduled to ship in the final quarter of 2004, Axapta 4.0 will likely be released in the first half of 2006. With the Axapta 4.0 release, Microsoft will provide a set of Axapta classes and APIs for developers to programmatically access Axapta functions and data previously accessible only through Axapta forms. (Axapta forms are application components that provide users access to Axapta functions and data; developers create and customize forms today using Axapta's proprietary MorphX development environment.) These changes will include a .NET API for Axapta, allowing developers to create managed code applications that call Axapta functions and update Axapta data (for example, a Web-based application that employees use to update time and attendance data stored in Axapta). Among other things, this new functionality will enable developers to use Visual Studio, Microsoft's popular development environment, to customize Axapta without requiring them to understand or learn Axapta's proprietary X++ programming language. Axapta 4.x. Although no release date has been set, an incremental update to Axapta 4.0 will further the product's support for .NET languages and add integration with the Visual Studio development environment. Enhancements likely include the ability to call functions within .NET assemblies (the core component of .NET applications) from Axapta objects such as forms. In addition, this update could see Axapta's development environment and tools hosted in Visual Studio, which will give Axapta developers access to popular Visual Studio capabilities such as source-code control and advanced debugging. Great Plains Acquired in 2001, Great Plains offers ERP software for mid-size businesses, with an emphasis on professional services companies (such as consulting or accounting firms), manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. It is sold by roughly 1,800 partners, primarily in North America, and has over 38,000 customers. Great Plains modules are available in two editions. The high-end product line, called Great Plains, is designed for larger organizations with 500 to 5,000 employees, and Great Plains Standard is based on the same code base as Great Plains but is geared toward businesses with 50 to 500 employees. Recent and pending Great Plains releases include the following: Great Plains 8.0. Released in June 2004, Great Plains 8.0 contained many incremental feature improvements across the product's existing modules. In addition, the release included two new public-sector accounting modules acquired from Encore Business Solutions in May 2004. A Grant Management module supports management and tracking of grant funds, and an Encumbrance Management module supports the process of tracking committed funds prior to the receipt and payment of vendor invoices. Great Plains Report Packs. In Mar. 2005, Microsoft announced the forthcoming availability of a Reporting Services report pack for Great Plains 8.0. The report pack includes eight report definitions supporting tasks such as tracking customer profitability and sales commissions, and gives developers a starting point for creating Great Plains' reporting solutions using Reporting Services. Also, in Mar. 2005, Microsoft announced the availability of a tool, called Analysis Cubes for Excel, acquired from partner Professional Advantage. The tool allows users to both create and view SQL Server Analysis Services cubes based on data in Great Plains (such as general ledger or accounts data). Great Plains 8.5. Planned for the fourth quarter of 2005, Great Plains 8.5 will introduce a new Web services API to complement the product's eConnect data access interface. (eConnect contains a set of SQL Server stored procedures and programming interfaces that developers use to integrate Great Plains with other business applications: for example, to do batch updates of customer records from a CRM system.) The new API will allow other business applications to access and update Great Plains data, such as purchase orders or inventory descriptions, in real-time. Great Plains 8.5 will also add features that allow customers to place orders through Great Plains' Web portal. Great Plains 9.0. The next major revision of Great Plains, tentatively planned for the fourth quarter of 2006, will continue the work started in Great Plains 8.5 by exposing a more full range of Great Plains data and functions via Web services. Additionally, the release will introduce support for "event-based" application development in Visual Studio. Developers will be able to subscribe to events associated with key Great Plains operations, such as a salesperson creating a customer order, to allow external applications to better interact with those operations. For example, a developer could use the event associated with the order to trigger an "available-to-promise" application, which would allow the salesperson to check inventory levels before committing to the order. Navision Navision, also acquired in July 2002, is an accounting and business management package for mid-size businesses (typically between two and 100 users, five and 500 employees). The product is sold through a network of about 2,000 channel partners and, as of the end of 2004, has garnered over 44,000 customers, most of which are manufacturing or distribution companies. Navision 4.0. Released in Oct. 2004, Navision 4.0 offered improved usability through a new Outlook-style UI and improved integration with SQL Server to deliver new business analytics and alerting capabilities. Navision 4.0 also offered incremental improvements in many of the product's functional areas, notably in the product's core financial management and manufacturing areas. As of the first quarter of 2005, Navision 4.0 is available in 23 countries; Microsoft plans to release it in 19 additional countries by May 2005. Navision 4.0 SP1. Planned for the third quarter of 2005, SP1 will address several bugs in Navision 4.0. The release will also be the ship vehicle for a revamped Employee Portal, Navision's module for Web-based access to Navision applications and data. The new version will be based on WSS, Microsoft's most recent portal platform. (The current Navision User Portal is based on an older Microsoft portal technology called the Digital Dashboard Resource Kit.) In addition, developers will likely get a .NET wrapper around Navision's C/FRONT data access API, a collection of over 100 C-language functions for manipulating Navision databases. The new data access API (called C/FRONT.NET) will support programmatic access to the Navision database from .NET languages such as C# and VB.NET, allowing developers to use Visual Studio to customize and extend Navision. Navision 5.0 is tentatively scheduled for the second half of 2006. Although Microsoft has not revealed details about its feature set, it seems likely that Navision 5.0 will continue to make the product more amenable to .NET-based application development. Possibilities could include a rewrite of the functions in the C/FRONT.NET API as native .NET Framework classes or an expansion of the API to include more of the functions available to developers today through Navision's proprietary C/SIDE development environment. Solomon Great Plains acquired Solomon Software to fill gaps in its product line shortly before Microsoft acquired Great Plains; as a result, Microsoft ended up with both product lines. Specifically, Solomon targets companies doing project-based work—professional services companies and construction firms, for example. Like Great Plains, it is sold predominantly in North America; it has more than 600 partners and about 13,000 customers. Like Great Plains and Navision, Solomon is available in a lower-priced Standard Edition. Solomon 6.0, which shipped in Oct. 2004, was the first release since Microsoft outsourced Solomon development to Plumbline Software, a new company created by Solomon's three founders. The release improved Solomon's order management features and financial tracking of projects and gave users browser-based access to Solomon data and applications via the Microsoft Business Portal. In addition, Solomon 6.0 introduced integration with Microsoft's FRx financial reporting application. Solomon 6.5, scheduled to enter beta in the fourth quarter of 2005, will introduce a new requisitions module, which will also offer new capabilities in the Microsoft Business Portal. Specifically, users will be able to initiate requisitions (such as those for construction equipment or materials) through the portal using a Web browser; today, initiating a requisition requires access to Solomon's client application. In addition, the release will allow users to connect to the business portal across the Internet. With Solomon 6.0, portal access is restricted to users connected to a company's intranet, either directly or through virtual private network (VPN) connections. Solomon 7.0, planned for the second half of 2006, could see a rewrite of the Solomon engine in VB.NET (existing versions of Solomon are written in VB). Such a move would also imply that Visual Studio would become the development environment for building custom Solomon solutions or extensions. Microsoft has also hinted that the release could include integration with SQL Server Reporting Services and other features planned for SQL Server 2005; for example, Solomon 7.0 could take advantage of the key performance indicator (KPI) features in SQL Server 2005. At Convergence, Microsoft reiterated that Solomon development is active despite its outsourcing to Plumbline, and said that it would continue to update and maintain the product through 2013. (In Jan. 2005, Microsoft's then-Chief Financial Officer John Connors mentioned unspecified MBS products as being in "maintenance mode." Connors's comment apparently referred to Apertum, a small business management package bought by Great Plains in 2000 and targeted at the German market, and C5, an accounting package aimed at companies in Denmark; the comment did not refer to Solomon.) Long-Term Outlook Still Cloudy At Convergence 2005, Burgum hinted at some directions and themes beyond the incremental releases planned through 2007, although specifics were light. (He referred to these future releases as "Project Green wave two.") For example, he suggested that ongoing releases, scheduled to follow the next major version of Windows (code-named Longhorn), would see increasing integration with Visual Studio. This could be a hint that the various proprietary development environments, languages, and designer tools of the individual ERP products could eventually be hosted in Visual Studio, similar to what Microsoft has done with BizTalk 2004 and SQL Server 2005. He also suggested that these future releases would make use of Longhorn features, such as the WinFX APIs and the "Indigo" Web services protocols. What that means for customers and partners in any practical sense, however, remains unspecified. A single, consolidated ERP code base appears to remain a Microsoft goal, although Burgum offered some reassurance that the transition would be less traumatic for customers and partners than some had originally feared. However, the precise timing of this consolidation and implications for today's ERP products and their partners and customers remain a mystery. Availability and Resources The MBS product line is described at www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions/default.mspx. The transcript of Burgum's Convergence 2005 keynote speech is at www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/burgum/03-07Convergence05.asp. MBS Vice President Satya Nadella speculates on Project Green at blogs.msdn.com/satyanadella/. MBS ERP releases in 2004 are described in "New UI and Analytics for Navision" on page 18 of the Jan. 2005 Update, "Axapta Releases Life Sciences Edition" on page 20 of the Jan. 2005 Update, "Solomon 6.0 Delivers Portal" on page 19 of the Nov. 2004 Update, "Navision Improves Modularity, UI" on page 24 of the Nov. 2003 Update, and "Axapta Gets FRx Reports" on page 22 of the Apr. 2004 Update. Avanade's purchase of Axapta integrator En'tegrate is described in "New Tool, Avanade Push Axapta" on page 22 of the Apr. 2005 Update. Information presented in this article builds on information previous published in "Business Solutions Roadmap 2004" on page 11 of the Mar. 2004 Update, and "Business Solutions Roadmap 2004 Updated" on page 20 of the Sept. 2004 Update. MBS's original plans for Project Green are discussed in "New Generation of MBS Products Planned" on page 16 of the Dec. 2003 Update. |
