Project Green was never an easy task because MBS had to work out how to bring together the four disparate ERP applications it had acquired, develop its own line of business software that included the much-talked-about CRM application which has also suffered several delays, and build easy-to-achieve integrations between the applications and its application infrastructure.
Microsoft’s approach was to effectively redesign ERP from the bottom up. Green was conceived as a plan geared towards pulling together a set of incompatible applications and ultimately moving them on to a single code base and service-based architecture. Always a long-term plan, the time period is winding out further as Microsoft comes face to face with the realities of the task.
Doug Burgum, head of Microsoft Business Solutions, highlighted what the division has achieved over the past 12 months, including shipping major upgrades and enhancements to its core business management products. He also provided existing customers with assurances about the future of their products by assuring them that MBS will enhance and support current applications until at least 2013. He said it will offer five years of mainstream support for each major release, based on the product’s date of general availability, and most products will include eight years of online self-help support.
As far as Project Green is concerned, Burgum said development efforts would be rolled out in two waves. The first will occur between 2005 and 2007, and will aim to deliver a shared user interface seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office. It will be based around 50 configurable roles that are common to most companies.
Another key focus of the 2005 to 2007 time period will be enabling the business applications to interoperate with service-oriented applications and the inclusion of a common configurable reporting environment based on SQL Server Reporting Services and a common security-enhanced intranet and extranet environment based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server.
He said the first set of Project Green-based features should be released in the autumn of 2005, when MBS ships Great Plains 8.5, followed by new releases of Axapta and Navision. The releases should incorporate the Green user interface and share the same web portal, business reports, and interoperability tools.
The second set of Green-based technology releases will begin shipping in 2008 and will concentrate on applying a model-driven approach to business processes, making use of WinFX and Visual Studio .NET capabilities to enable them. MBS hopes this will enable it to deliver innovation in terms of its business offerings and what its customers can do with them. Microsoft’s current plan is that by about 2008 the applications will share the same code.
Burgum also outlined the delivery roadmap for Microsoft Business Solutions business applications. Axapta 3.0 Service Pack 4 will be released in the second quarter 2005. A beta version of Axapta 4.0 is expected in the fourth quarter, with a release to manufacturing expected in the first half of 2006.
Microsoft Great Plains 8.5 and Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal 3.0 will be made available in the fourth quarter 2005. Navision 4.01 will be released in the third quarter 2005 followed by Solomon 6.5 in the fourth quarter.
As far as its homegrown applications are concerned, version 2 of the CRM application is expected to be released to manufacturing in the fourth quarter of 2005.
MBS is also rolling out its Forecaster analytics application and providing integration with the other enterprise applications. Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 will be released in the third quarter 2005. In the first quarter 2006, integration of Analytics-FRx 6.7 with Microsoft Navision 3.0 and Microsoft Navision 4.0 will be introduced. In the first half of 2006, Microsoft FRx 7.0 will be launched, with Microsoft Forecaster 8.0 scheduled for the second half of 2006. Retail Management System, MBS’s point-of-sale solution is slated for the second quarter 2005.
The division has a huge task ahead of it and some slippage is inevitable, but it is under even greater pressure because the MBS division has not performed as well as was expected in terms of revenue generation. Uncertainties over Green have also provided other new entrants to the SMB business applications market with more time to market and execute, while incumbents like Sage and Intentia have sought to capitalize along with acquisition-heavy players like SSA Global and Chinadotcom.
