Microsoft's Business Solutions group released June 18 the next iterations of two of the company's four business application suites, GP 10 and SL 7.
Both suites sport a new Office-like user interface, integration with Office 2007, Web services enablement and a common business portal architecture with a move over to SharePoint Server code.
The upgrades complete Wave 1 of the two-wave process of converging Microsoft's four separate ERP (enterprise resource planning) suites.
The question is, Now that Microsoft is ready to move to Wave 2 in an increasingly convoluted ERP road map—first it planned to converge the four code bases; now it will converge the suites through a common platform—are customers looking forward to the evolution? Edward Lux, vice president of technology at ChemPoint.com, is.
Click here to read about a quiet reshuffling of the Microsoft Dynamics executive team.
"For me it's great," said Lux, in Belleview, Wash. "I don't have to look at a day where I am told I have to jump the gorge to get to the other side; what [Microsoft] is going to do is support the other side. [Project Green] would have been, 'On this date we turn the lights out—either join us or you're done.' Microsoft realizes that's not going to work."
Project Green, the early code name for the suite's convergence, was a two-wave plan to rewrite Microsoft's four ERP suites—GP, NAV, SL, and AX—into a single code base.
At its last Convergence user conference in March, Microsoft officials confirmed that the company will likely not move to a single code base—the initial plan for Wave 2—but rather would converge the suites through a common underlying technology stack including SQL Server, Visual Studio .Net, BizTalk Server, Workflow Foundation and other server technologies.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Microsoft Gives Dynamics Apps Office Makeover
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