ISVs Face the Challenges, Opportunities of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 Solution Certification

When it comes to trusted add-on solutions for Microsoft Dynamics, Certified for Microsoft Dynamics, or CfMD, status is Microsoft's gold standard for quality.  Independent software vendors (ISVs) and reselling partners bank on CfMD as a stamp of approval that gets their solution on the short lists of more customers and resellers.

For Dynamics NAV 2013, Microsoft expects the CfMD process to produce well over 100 certified solutions, says Brian Graftaas, the CfMD program manager, a number that is lower, by design, than past releases. The current number of available CfMD solutions worldwide sits at seventeen, five months after the release of NAV 2013.  The rigorous process, which Graftaas stresses is driven by quality rather than quantity, is still a work in progress for the majority of Dynamics NAV ISVs, but many vendors see CfMD for NAV 2013 as a must-have from a sales and financial perspective. In the meantime, partners, customers, and ISVs are adjusting to the slower than expected time frame for solution delivery and making contingency plans for those solutions that might not make it to NAV 2013.

The NAV Easy Security story

"CfMD is almost mandatory for NAV 2013", believes Per Mogensen, a Dynamics NAV MVP and founder of MergeTool, makers of NAV Easy Security.  NAV Easy Security achieved CfMD for NAV 2013 in October 2012 as part of the TAP program.  Attaining certification was a four month process that Mogensen documented in  detail in a webcast that is available on YouTube. 

By devoting himself and his small development shop to achieving CfMD status in the earliest stages of the NAV 2013 program, Mogensen believes ...