Evolving Approach to Consolidation

Shortly following the acquisitions of Great Plains (in 2001) and Navision (in 2002), Microsoft introduced a plan to reconcile the four separate but similar enterprise resource planning (ERP) application lines products those acquisitions netted-Great Plains, Solomon (acquired with Great Plains), Navision, and Axapta (acquired with Navision). Announced in 2003 and referred to as Project Green, the plan called for a ground-up, .NET-based rewrite of the business management features in the four lines. According to that plan, the new Project Green code base would eventually replace the acquired products and their separate code bases with a single product. However, Microsoft gave no assurance that this future product would be compatible with shipping MBS products, causing many existing and prospective customers to question the wisdom of investing in those shipping products.

To ease those concerns, the company offered a reworked vision of Project Green in Mar. 2005. Instead of introducing a brand new product, Microsoft would update its existing ERP products in two “waves” of releases that would bring them “to a point that’s more unified in the future,” according to a keynote presentation given by Doug Burgum, then the senior vice president of MBS. Burgum also said that Microsoft would support and update its existing ERP products through at least 2013, signaling to customers that they would not be forced to migrate to the new product when it was introduced.