Overview
This year, the Dynamics NAV Directions conference is held in a nice resort in Orlando. I always feel guilty about attending these conference nice resort hotel without my kids…
Overall the conference was a bit confusing for me as Microsoft had decided on the last minute to delay the release of the new version of Dynamics NAV “Tenerife”. This created a lot of confusion amongst partners and the people giving sessions on exactly what they’re trying to present.
The general sense of the sessions I’ve attended is that everything is still to be determined. Which made it a really frustrating event in that whatever I learn today, may be wrong tomorrow.
What’s New
The breakout sessions didn’t help to clear things up, but here’s what we know:
- Dynamics NAV will be renamed to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition. Yes, it rolls right off the tongue.
- This release will be the full cloud platform that will include every functionality in the standard Dynamics NAV.
- For any modifications that you need, “Tenerife” will allow you to make custom changes to extensions for your customer into their extensions
- The next release will be deployable on both on premise and full cloud.
- Future developments for Extensions will be in VS code
- To take full advantage of the features of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition, you will need Office 365 – Business Premium Edition
Closing
The highlight of this conference was the closing session given by Marko Perisic. It was a heartfelt and unscripted speech regarding the future of NAV, the reseller/ISV channel, and the blood, sweat, tears, and joys of Microsoft employees that worked on the Tenerife project.
Marko firmly believes the future is bright for the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition. He is extremely proud of the product and what it can do for the customers.
From what they’ve showcased so far, although a ton of work still needs to be done, I’m extremely excited for this release as well. In addition to pricing competitiveness, it will be hard to see why customers would want to purchase NetSuite or Acumatica when Microsoft releases “Tenerife”.
Advice You Need to Heed
If you haven’t already, get used to developing your custom code and addons for the Microsoft AppSource. There will be challenges on how you approach developing extensions and the pitfalls you will run into.
You will not be able to remove code from the core product and you will not be able to dictate the order in which your extension and other extensions should run. Those are all under the To Be Determined.
Was it confirmed that AppSource will survive? Is Microsoft adding more countries?
Hi Alex,
I appreciate your effort to add the happenings which helps lot of us who are not able to attend.
We look forward to your blogs & post to get updated.
Thanks,
Sachin
Yes, AppSource will survive. They will be making changes to it though.
👿 I want Navision (Name of the Product) back….
I think a lot of people do…
Was there much of a kerfuffle over the whitelabel naming? I read some tweets that made it sound like a big deal.
Regarding the encouragement/enforcement of whitelabeling, I personally think Microsoft saw the success of NAV products like “Financials for Office 365” from Hands-On Systems (now owned by KPMG) and wanted to encourage replication of that type of branding in the North American market. It could also be that Microsoft is losing faith in the Excel lookup formula that came up with “Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition (on-premises).”
The whole whitelabeling thing is under review by Marko.
But regarding the product, I would say that D365 is suffering from an identity crisis between what kind of company it should really cater to.
I personally think the most obvious target market is NAV 2009 users. Microsoft should help with that, in my opinion. I’ve seen and responded to many mini-requests that are essentially “We use NAV 2009, our partner X is no longer in the NAV business, we are stuck with ISV solution Y, and we just need some quick help fixing A, B, C, and D.”
NAV 2009 seems to me like our Windows XP. Or worse, our Internet Explorer… our Windows Mobile. NAV 2009 users may be the perfect niche to move straight to a “full NAV” D365, but they are stuck in a holding pattern that started nearly a decade ago. Without a clear path forward, they may be liable to move to a different platform just like the Chrome and Android/iPhone users did.
Well said. However, I don’t believe Microsoft really focuses on users with a specific version of users to convert. Their goal is to migrate everyone, which seem to be a really tough task, both in terms of logistics and concept.
A product named Dynamics NAV 2018 may well be released in 2018.
Simplifying Dynamics 365 Offerings
I mean released in late-2017.