Microsoft Corp. intends to remain and invest in the business applications market for the long term, and will take a measured approach to merging its four current application products, the software giant told customers at its annual Convergence conference in San Diego.
The message was intended to reassure users who have watched Microsoft continue to lose money in business applications, and who have expressed some concern about the company's plan, under the Project Green banner, to unify its core applications -- Great Plains, Axapta, Navision and Solomon -- under a common code base.
Initially, Microsoft said the consolidation would occur in as little as two years, causing concern among customers who feared current Microsoft products would not be supported long term.
At Convergence, however, Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) SVP Doug Burgum said the company will continue to support existing products for at least five years. And, he laid out a roadmap that emphasized evolutionary change.
"Project Green is still very much alive, but it is different than it was two years ago," says Burgum. While the effort will still result in a common code base, the path will emphasize "innovation without so much disruption."
Between now and 2007, all of Microsoft's business apps, including Microsoft CRM, will undergo major enhancements before consolidation to a common code base begins after 2008. Axapta version 4.0 will be released in the first half of 2006, followed by Navision (version 5), Great Plains (version 9) and Solomon (version 7). Microsoft CRM will receive an upgrade to version 2 in the fourth quarter of this year, Burgum said.
Besides including new functional modules, those new releases will be integrated with existing Microsoft technology. Axapta, for example, will begin to use Microsoft's Sharepoint portal as well as its SQL-Server Reporting Services.
Migration of the applications to a model-driven architecture will begin in 2008, making configuration changes easier and, ultimately, allowing for consolidation of the product lines, Burgum said.
In the meantime, Burgum told reporters, Microsoft will continue to invest in business applications, even in the face of financial loses in the market. In its most recent fiscal quarter, MBS lost $29 million on flat revenues of $210 million.
Customer reactions were positive. "When we were looking for an ERP package, vendor viability was an issue," says Bill Caldwell, senior developer, Nelnet. "That's one reason we went with Great Plains: our expectation that Microsoft would support the business over the long haul."
This story was repurposed from the May 2005 issue of Managing Automation magazine.