Microsoft enhances Dynamics NAV 2013's 'Mission Control' for partners, larger customers

Earlier this year the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service Experience team released the Dynamics NAV 2013 Management Pack for System Center. According to the team's blog, this extension package is helping Microsoft System Center Operations Manager users monitor computer systems running Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013.

In June, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 Feature Pack 1 (FP1) was released. It included management and Windows Azure provisioning features and introduced a new way of deploying Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web components, allowing the user to install and configure multiple Web applications for a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web site.

In order to use these new features and monitor multiple Dynamics NAV web server instances and applications, customers must install the new version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 FP1 Management Pack for System Center. (It can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.)

Referring to Operations Manager as "mission control for the Microsoft estate," Rob Helm, managing vice president of research at Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland, Wash., says the vendor has turned to a mix of hosting providers and cloud services to expand the market for Dynamics NAV. "As a result," Helm says, "it has become more important to give partners good tools to be able to manage large NAV installations - even though they may be made up of a bunch of small customers."

Larger Dynamics NAV customers that have invested in multiple Microsoft products also benefit from the enhancements made to Operations Manager. "There's a lot of infrastructure associated with Operations Manager, which ...