Business Framework Folds

The team responsible for the Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) has been dissolved and its members moved into other organizations within Microsoft. The reorganization stems from a decision to cancel the MBF, which was envisioned as a business logic foundation on which Microsoft would build future generations of business applications (such as Project Green, which was recently renamed Dynamics). Some of the MBF team’s work has made its way into Visual Studio 2005 and other work could show up in subsequent releases of that product. However, some work has been scrapped in favor of competing Microsoft technologies such as the Windows Workflow Foundation.

A Foundation for Business Applications

The MBF was intended to address several problems in the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) portfolio of business applications, such as Great Plains and Axapta, including the fact that every MBS application uses a different code base, libraries, and programming interface. Furthermore, these products rely on aging Microsoft technologies, such as the Component Object Model (COM), rather than modern Microsoft technologies such as the .NET Framework. Microsoft also intended the MBF as a tool for third parties and corporate developers building business applications.