Agree! Investments have been noticeable across all products of the Microsoft Dynamics ERP stack. Dynamics AX mostly has seen these investments due to strategy and not necessarily favoritisms among products. The strategy is simple: make it the best darn ERP product in the market giving Microsoft a shot to compete with the Oracles and SAPs of the world - not said by me, but by Microsoft in its various one liners at various conferences. Dynamics GP is seeing one of the largest overhauls in its next release - codename GP "12": more powerful web services with the introduction of multi-tenancy, more standard SSRS reports (get this, Report Writer is being phased out as the primary report delivery tool!) and Metrics, and if I am not mistaken, it's the first of the 4 products to outline a cloud computing strategy with the introduction of the web client and support for several named system databases on a single SQL Server. In short, the best darn ERP for the middle market segment! My crystal ball is made up facts. Take a look at my articles: Microsoft Dynamics GP Web Architecture Series http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/2011/05/microsoft-dynamics-gp-12-web-client.html Codename GP "12" Preliminary Features Series http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/2011/11/codename-gp-12-preliminary-features_23.html While the ERP future is bright now, take this for what it is: a simple guess, but Microsoft will need to continue to make the business case to its shareholders as to the need to have 4 ERPs. For now, the numbers support the business case, but when they no longer do...you get the point. Very interesting article and certainly provocative thoughts. Mariano Gomez, MVP

.. Microsoft would sell NAV back to the original developers and let it fight its own marketing battles. It's increasingly relegated behind AX in Microsoft's marketing collateral and that is a huge itch for dedicated Navision resellers that needs constant scratching.

First, thanks for an interesting article. Although I agree with your overall assessment and believe that Dynamics AX is Microsoft's solution to compete with SAP R3 market, I don't think that we will see it enter the SMB market that GP / NAV covers precisely because "AX also takes a bit more to configure.... so the implementation costs can be quite a bit higher." In essence, the same reason why SAP has B1. This is not just a perception as I have spent a decent amount of time on this subject including off the record interviews with... well you get the idea. I believe that partners should evaluate their market and ponder the opportunities and decide if they want to commit to AX based on this. If not, then they should not allow themselves to enter a FUD state, which is what Microsoft has, unwillingly?, done.

I remember an official Microsoft announcement from a few years ago that they are consolidating their products over a period of time and that we could expect only one or two ERP systems instead of the four (by 2015). I guess it also makes sense to have one mid-tier ERP and one top-tier ERP. Do you perhaps have any more recent feedback on this? Thanks, Ritesh