Business Solutions Roadmap 2004

Incremental releases across the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) product line in 2004 will improve features, further integrate the MBS portfolio with other Microsoft products, such as Office, and offer better integration among MBS products. Microsoft hopes these changes will retain existing customers of mature MBS products, spur uptake of recent product additions, offer new opportunities for partners, and drive sales or upgrades of products such as Office 2003 in some 260,000 MBS customer accounts.

However, little effort will be made in 2004 to consolidate overlapping MBS product functions. In fact, many products will receive updates in similar feature areas, such as manufacturing and distribution capabilities. In addition, customers will not see sweeping technology or architecture changes in the product line: for example, only the Microsoft Business Portal will shift to the .NET platform. Farther-reaching plans to consolidate business management functions on a common technology and code base are part of a future (beyond 2004) project, code-named Project Green.