Microsoft Evolves its Enterprise Plans

March 17, 2007 from PC World – “When the vendor (Microsoft) first started talking about Project Green in 2003, the initiative focused on bringing the disparate products then known as Axapta, Great Plains, Navision, Solomon and CRM together into a single code base. Then in May 2005, Microsoft began to talk more about having two distinct waves of the projects. Wave one committed Microsoft to bringing out major new releases of each of its business offerings, while wave two, due to start occurring in 2008, was when the company would begin releasing elements of the converged code base.

By September 2005, Microsoft brought its back-end applications together under a single brand name "Dynamics" resulting in the rechristening of its business applications as Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, SL and CRM. At that point, the vendor announced "Dynamics" would also refer to the ongoing Project Green research and development road map, but the old name has refused to die and still persists among the company's executives, partners and customers.
Fast forward to this week's Convergence show in San Diego and the natural question is what's happening with Project Green? Is a converged product or platform still on Microsoft's agenda?

"We don't have the goal of just convergence for convergence's sake," said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Business Solutions group. "We've delivered on Wave 1 and, with each sharing of technology, we're increasing the level of convergence, but it's not a front and central goal. We now have a common portal, a common UI (user interface) and common Web services infrastructure. Perhaps the news here is that Green's done," he added…”

180 View – I (Michael Burns) was at also at Convergence – see the article above entitled “Microsoft’s ERP Wave Hits Shore”. At Convergence, I asked Satya Nadella the question about the future of Project Green. There is still some confusion about Microsoft’s enterprise plans. We were told that all the products will share the same user experience. However it’s not so clear what will happen with the four Microsoft ERP systems. What I heard is that each product will continue to evolve but they will gradually become more differentiated. Microsoft also announced that they will focus on five industries – Manufacturing, Distribution, Professional Services, Retail and Public Sector. I anticipate that each product will be mapped to one of these industries and if more than one is mapped to a particular industry, there will be other differentiators.