With today’s partner launch of the newest version of Great Plains, Microsoft embarks on the first step of integrating its collection of four enterprise-class applications under one roof.
Now dubbed Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, the business management application for small and medium companies — which ships Dec. 19 — promises to take greater advantage of Web services, deeper integration with Microsoft Office, an Outlook-type interface, enhanced business intelligence tools and a role-based desktop.
There will also be consulting toolkits and Vertical PowerPacks to help partners with implementations.
However, according to Billy Maynard of Gartner Research, 160 Web services components needed to take full advantage of GP 9’s capabilities (called Extensions) won’t ship until the first quarter of next year.
GP partners are looking forward to the release. “It’s going to be a nice version,” George Braun, president of TGO Consulting, a Markham, Ont. solution provider, said in a pre-launch interview. His company counts on the application for about 90 per cent of the company’s $8 million in annual revenues.
Brent Twist, CEO of Encore Business Solutions of Winnipeg, believes 80 per cent of Great Plains users will want to upgrade in the next six months.
Great Plains is grouped under the Microsoft Business Solutions division, along with ERP siblings Axapta, Navision and Solomon. Although targeted at different markets there is some overlap, which causes confusion among customers as well as partners. Sometimes a Great Plains VAR, for example, will find itself bidding for a deal with a Navision partner.
Because all four applications were acquired by Microsoft they also come with different code bases and toolkits. So several years ago the company promised to eventually merge them into one. Customers weren’t enthused at the original plan, which suggested there might be a need for complex porting.
Earlier this year Microsoft released a new roadmap, vowing to use Web services and a service oriented architecture to bring the applications together. As a symbol of that goal of unity, the four applications have been renamed under one umbrella: Dynamics GP, Dynamics AX (Axapta), Dynamics NAV (Navision) and Dynamics SL (Solomon).
Dynamics AX and NAV will have new releases next year, with the new unified code base not expected until at least 2008.
According to Maynard, Microsoft will achieve the converged platform by adopting integrating Web services into the four applications in two waves.
For GP 9.0, this first wave of services will help users perform a range of functions such as create accounts or process general ledger transactions. Developers or ISVs who want to build specialized functions will be able to do so through Visual Studio 2005.
Maynard and other analysts believe GP 9.0 will be welcomed by buyers and partners. “The integration to Office and the (new) user interface . . . is going to be well-received,” Maynard said. Another improvement which will score well are templates for creating 21 role-based interfaces so certain users can have quick access to particular information.
The improvements are “going to be enough to make most of the GP customers make a serious evaluation of whether they should upgrade.”
As for partners and ISVs, “the fact that they’re exposing Web services and making them available through Visual Studio 2005 will make it easier for them to develop their own extensions or industry solutions that compliment Great Plains.”
“It will be a winner for them,” said Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman.
Longer-term, however, Microsoft faces big challenges. Creating the new architecture will take three or four years, Hamerman noted.
“It becomes an engineering challenge,” said Chris Alliegro, an analyst with Directions On Microsoft. “How do you take four products and converge them to a single code base, one back-end set of data structures and a consolidated set of programming interfaces in such a way customers and third party applications can migrate.
“It’s hard to imagine that Microsoft can do this in such a way that there aren’t fairly complex data migrations.
“It’s probably almost impossible.”
Microsoft isn’t alone in that boat: Oracle is trying to do the same as it merges it’s newly-purchases PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications with its E-Business Suite.
But it has to be done as competition for mid-market ERP applications intensifies.
Until Microsoft has a more unified product it will be at a disadvantage said Braun, who wishes it would do more product marketing today.
“A lot of companies don’t know about Microsoft Business Solutions,” he said. “There’s still a bit of confusion about the product lines.”
