Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Begin Annual Release Cycles with NAV "Sicily" in 2013

Microsoft Dynamics NAV product team members today reiterated their plans to introduce a one year release cycle in 2013 with a release codenamed "Sicily", also known as NAV 8.

Building on the NAV 2013 3-tier platform and three standard user interfaces - desktop, web client, and SharePoint, the "Sicily" release will introduce a new flat Windows 8 interface for some workloads, and will use the R&D team's recently adopted agile development process to more quickly build out production-ready features.

"That style of development is core and central to what NAV clients need," said Dynamics ERP SMB product manager Elizabeth Alexander, speaking to users at NAVUG Forum today in Seattle.  She was joined by Brett Johnson, a senior program manager for Dynamics NAV.

The new Windows 8 interface is aimed at re-imagining the NAV ERP experience as a service-based layer in the larger "business solution from Microsoft" vision, according to the speakers.  It is a vision that Microsoft and its partners have demonstrated before to some extent, but not as a planned feature of the next release. 

The new flat interface will be introduced in the Sicily release for a limited set of workloads, according to Johson, though no specific details of the demo were promised or committed to yet.  The demo view shown to the audience included two screenshots - a Windows 8 dashboard with production, design, and task data, as well as a drill down screen for production-related data like planning and inventory, seen below (in a poor quality photo).