Dynamics Consolidation Plans Intact

The plan to consolidate Microsoft’s overlapping line of four enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications remains intact, despite conflicting reports from Convergence 2007, Microsoft’s annual conference for Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) customers and partners. According to the plan, Microsoft will continue to update and support the four products for several years, eventually converging on a single product after 2013. However, immediately following Convergence, Microsoft announced that Satya Nadella, MBS’s recently appointed lead executive, would vacate his spot. Although his departure probably will not immediately alter the group’s course, the leadership change could trigger a change in plans.

Single Product Still the Goal

Since acquiring Great Plains in 2001 and Navision in 2002, Microsoft has wrestled with how best to consolidate the four separate but similar ERP applications netted by those acquisitions. An early plan called Project Green proposed replacing those products (Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, and SL) with a single, new product built with modern programming languages and based on the .NET Framework. That plan was replaced in 2005 by a more loosely defined, open-ended transition plan (referred to as Dynamics Waves) that calls for the company to support all of its existing ERP products while it gradually extends the Dynamics AX product, which will provide the foundation for a single strategic product in the future.