Microsoft Business Solutions Unwraps Latest In Great Plains, ERP Lineup

Speaking to some 4,000 MBS customers and partners at the kick-off of Convergence 2004 in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft Senior Vice President Doug Burgum showed off new Microsoft CRM Mobile capabilities and the new Office look-and-feel of the upcoming Great Plains Release 8. The new Great Plains also will get other features and functions in Office, including autofill and Watson error reporting, he said. Both products are due out this summer.

In addition, Axapta, Great Plains and Navision applications will get new demand-planning capabilities, and in the near term Microsoft plans to introduce Microsoft Business Portal 2.5, which will feature requisition management, time and expense management and other perks, the company said.

Navision 4.0, which sports a revamped user interface and promises more tools to support vertical application development for ISVs, is due out in October, according to Microsoft. Solomon 6.0, which is targeted at project, service and distribution companies, will add more Business Portal capabilities and is slated for release in North America in July.

Microsoft's Denver-based FRx Software Group is working on new Web Parts plug-ins for the Microsoft Business Network and is upgrading the user interface to be more in line with the Outlook/Office 2003 model, according to FRx Software executives.

The longevity of business applications remains a key factor for customers of all sizes, so Microsoft is downplaying talk about long-term future products, such as its Project Green next-generation business applications, which are expected to be rolled out sometime after the Longhorn release of Windows. The timetable for that release, though, is still nebulous. Last fall, Microsoft publicly announced that a beta of the Longhorn client would debut in late 2004, but it hasn't revealed a date for the server.

Microsoft insiders at the Convergence 2004 event said there is no point in talking about Project Green now. "It just confuses people," said one Navision official.

For more on Convergence, see CRN.