The Dynamics Product Range PIII

I ended my previous post on this subject by reviewing several facts, basically Ax has had one new version in 4 years under MS, Nav has had 4 new versions, GP has had 3 new versions.

Inspite of the above facts I concluded that MS had two options as regards choice of "The" product with which to replace the others, one is "Green" the other is Ax.

Let me explain my reasoning for this.

MS have a general policy of moving everything to .NET, imminently we will have .NET3 or formerly WinFX, I will not comment that here as others have already done so on the web just do a search on the subject in your favourite search tool.

The language in which you develop in Navision C/AL is a 4GL giving very compact code, but also it is very hard to see how you could translate it too C#.
Dexterity the language you develop GP in is closer to C++ but still it is unwieldy http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994230.aspx#mbs_gpdevtools_dexterity, take a look for yourself on MSDN.

From a pure elegance point of view Ax to me is the closest thing MS has today in it's arsenal to a C# language with an ERP solution built in. That does not mean that I believe that this will necessarily be the platform / solution that is necessarily chosen for the future, but I believe it is the one that comes the closest to being it.

If I were a customer today and I had to plunk down real money on a project that I knew was going to be for a life expectancy of at least 10 years, I believe that buying Ax will give me the smallest ongoing costs over any of the other Dynamics products.

Unless of course I would be willing not to follow MS and upgrade my platform when the time comes and MS gives us "The Dynamics product".

There are as always caveats in the above, because Ax is not globally distributed to the same level (there are markets with no or few experienced partners), because the pricing remains a sore point, because overall Ax has the smallest installed base (the latest sales pitch I saw from MS states 6,500 Ax, 45,000 Nav, and 60,000 GP). You may reconsider or consider otherwise, and of course given that MS want to carry on selling all products in the interim they will never state the above, let alone confirm it.

All MS statements in this regard carry what I would call marketing language, stating we will build a new product that envelops all the existing products. Now from a marketing standpoint I can see that is a desirable goal, but how from concrete standpoint are you going to merge code unit 13 from Nav with the SalesFormLetter_Invoice class from Ax, and whatever the equivalent is in GP / Dexterity.

Further to this once MS have managed this internally, how about the dealer channel and the users, bringing everyone on to the next platform is going to be one gigantic challenge, and the real challenge facing MS with these purchases.

It is sometimes instructive to look back at history / current events elsewhere. Oracle has made similar big bets on purchasing other products. Initially there were combative words from Oracle itself stating the customers would be given incentives to move and the existing platforms would be encouraged to die.

Very soon after these initial scary announcements that SAP, Lawson and others were not tardy in reacting to the above announcement by offering competitive upgrades in order to lock down the customers, and using the confusion generated by the initial Oracle pronouncements about support and the future to gain marketshare.

Oracle very quickly changed the above and adopted what to me is a mirror image of MS's policy statements, stipulating continued development through at least 2013 etc etc. Funny as I repeat myself in stating that they chose exactly this date ;-).

However inspite of the above in the 2 years following the purchase (done in dec 2004) my echos from colleagues in the industry is that the Peoplesoft and JD Edwards consultants are fleeing, at least in the country offices in Europe. Cannot speak for the US market as I am not active in it. Microsoft seems to be of the same opinion as they have in this time frame come out with specialised training programmes that are designed to cross train consultants specifically from these products onto Ax.

Being an Ax expert right now is a golden time frame to be one, however I believe that MS is going to change many things in the product over the next few years. V4 is only a beginning, no more 2 tier clients, enforced link to an AD server, much improved AOS, etc. And as an Ax person you have to be awake and follow these things closely, also of course you have to be willing to jump ship accross to "Green" when and if it is wheeled out the advantage will be yours.

/Sven