Supplemental Product Strategy in Flux

Supplemental products in the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) family have historically contained targeted feature improvements, as opposed to sweeping functional and architectural changes—similar to MBS’s approach with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) product lines. In general, such updates refine existing features, improve integration with the Dynamics product lines, and in some cases, improve integration with mainstream Microsoft products, such as Office. In most cases, MBS customers purchase support or maintenance plans that cover the cost of these incremental releases.

However, as the company has refined plans for its ERP product lines, advances in its supplemental business management products have slowed. With the exception of a small, incremental release of Retail Management System (RMS), it appears that Microsoft will not update any of its supplemental products in 2006. For example, neither FRx nor Forecaster will ship a new release in 2006, despite plans announced a year ago that called for an FRx update in 2006 and a Forecaster release late in 2005. Thus, three to four years will elapse between major releases, unusual for products that have historically shipped updates on a predictable, regular basis.