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Business Solutions to drive Microsoft's .NET strategy

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25th Dec 2005
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Softworld Accounting & Finance this week gave Microsoft Business Solutions the chance to set out its masterplan for the UK market and to reveal the new names for its three main ERP software families.

Following on from last month's Stampede in Minneapolis, UK country manager Simon Edwards held court in Birmingham to explain how the US-driven MBS product strategy would filter through to users in this country. He emphasised why business applications had suddenly become such a priority for Microsoft.

"Where Microsoft Office drove the adoption of Windows, business applications will drive the adoption of .NET [Microsoft's next generation Web-based operating environment]. That's why Microsoft acquired these companies," Edwards said.

In the short-term, all of the existing MBS product families would continue to be supported and developed. The three main products have been assigned new names within MBS. Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise is now called Microsoft Great Plains. Navision Attain becomes Microsoft Navision and Navision Axapta is Microsoft Axapta.

While the company works in the background to create a new Business Framework based on the .NET development platform, Edwards said that the existing product families would not suffer from technical neglect.

"Since the acquisitions, we've probably doubled spending on R&D and invested more in the products' futures - particularly when you measure it against what other vendors are investing," said Edwards.

"We've come to this show with new versions of all three families and they are all going to benefit from cross-migration and from making use of the full Microsoft technology stack."

Edwards advised that it could be three years or more before the next generation business applications emerge, but in the intervening time the company would build bridges between the old families and the new by introducing "surrounding" products.

Starting with Microsoft CRM, the customer relationship management application due in the beginning of 2003, the surrounding products will familiarise users with .NET's capabilities, he continued. Next in the queue will be the Business Portal, a browser interface that will give users views into their applications based around the job roles they carry out.

"Business Portal is the presentation environment of the next generation software products. When users do migrate - which will be free of charge - they will be familiar with the Portal, CRM and the other applications, so it will only be a matter of switching over the back-office applications," said Edwards.

One concern highlighted by nearly 5% of respondents in IT Zone's latest survey is the issue of planned obsolescence and the constant upgrade ladder that vendors force their customers to climb.

Edwards acknowledged that the Software Assurance licence charges for Windows XP had created a negative perception in the market that was affecting his business wing.

"We have a different model from the rest of Microsoft," Edwards insisted.

"Upgrades for Microsoft Business Solutions are provided free of charge - like the rest of the ERP industry. We are aware licensing issues caused some customer discomfort, but have tired to minimise these in the Business Solutions arena. Our opinion is that the customers will be paying for the upgrades whether they have them or not."

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