In recent weeks, pundits and software rivals have been questioning the feasibility of Microsoft's Project Green, the long-term strategy to consolidate its Dynamics business application families into a single, streamlined suite.

On his way back from a recent Microsoft technical conference, Josh Greenbaum [1] used his blog to discuss the implications of Microsoft's "technology stack", which bonds Dynamics applications into the Windows environment, unified communications, web portals and links delivered via SharePoint Services and last, but not least, Excel as the medium for viewing and analysing management information.

The problem with the stack, according to Greenbaum, was the inherent complexity. Up to 14 separate servers might be required to support the full implementation.

"The emergence of Dynamics into the realm of complexity is one of the main obstacles the company has created for itself, and it’s going to be hard for it to stop digging this hole," Greenbaum wrote. "But they’ll have to figure out how to stop bragging about technology and get back to the functionality that their customers are much more interested in hearing about."

Stephen Jay, UK manging director for HansaWorld, raised further doubts about Microsoft's business applications model at the recent Softworld event.

"No one is exposing the emperor's new clothes," he said.

It is now almost four years since Project Green got underway, and Microsoft has already moved back the likely arrival dates and recast the migration as a "two-wave" process starting with the user interface and common horizontal applications such as CRM, due for completion next year, before moving on to the underlying systems architecture and specific ERP modules by 2012-13.

"Do people really believe Project Green will be a fusion of the best bits of three products?" Jay asked. "Project Green will either be a version of one of three products - GP, NAV or AX - with a few additions from the other suites. Or it will be a new product built from the ground up.

AccountingWEB consultant editor David Carter voiced similar doubts. "Microsoft has a lot to offer on usability and screen design, but I can't see how anyone can combine GP and NAV together. I'm not even sure what the point of it is," he said.

"They're chalk & cheese. GP is older and clunkier - it's primarily an accounting system that hasn't made much impact in the UK except within accounts departments, while NAV is a slick operational system for stock and order processing. They're designed for different markets, so having a single package for both doesn't make much sense."

At Microsoft's summer partner conference [2] in Boston, UK product group director Paul White said the company didn't talk much about Project Green any more. With the first wave releases this year, he said, "We're living it."

Jay put a different interpretation on Microsoft's reticence. "Is Microsoft playing down Project Green because they can't deliver it? The company says everything is hunky-dory and resellers believe it is on track, but maybe Microsoft is playing it down because it's frightened of what Project Green will do," he said.

In order to reassure current prospects, Microsoft and its Dynamics resellers have promised existing users free upgrades to the next generation product family.

"But what does free mean?" Jay said. "They're talking about the licence fees - but users still face the disruption and cost of migrating to the new product. Our research has shown the service-to-software ratio is typically 2.7:1 in the first year and you can expect that figure to increase to 5:1 over the life of the software."

Also at Softworld, Kevin Binley from Microsoft Dynamics AX reseller Ciber put the case for Microsoft's defence. Part of the Project Green equation was "transformational assurance", he explained. In simpler terms, this meant that the migration was being planned to be as simple as possible.

"The biggest issue is generally the user experience," Binley said. "This is what Microsoft has tackled in the first wave of Project Green to make the user experience the same in all the applications. GP, AX and NAV all look the same and will work with the same Office 12 integration.

"Although some of the modules will do different things, they will all use similar tools such as SharePoint web portals. Behind the scenes the integration tools will be the same - web services, BizTalk and .NET. They all run on SQL Server and have had the same analysis and reporting tools since 2005."

The bit's that left for the second wave are the transaction processing elements, he continued. "The user doesn’t really see that and people won't necessarily notice if that's changed."

As a software reseller, Ciber drew comfort from Microsoft's Dynamics product roadmap, which takes the current product families through to 2012. "Compare that with SAP All-in-One or Business One," Binley said.

Next week, AccountingWEB will explore these questions in meetings with Microsoft, its business partner Advantage Business Systems and several Dynamics users. Add your feedback below if you would like to contribute to this ongoing debate about Microsoft's software consolidation project.