Microsoft Dynamics NAV: On the road to 'Corfu' at Convergence 2015

At Microsoft Convergence 2015 this week, Microsoft Dynamics representatives touted the streamlined and simplified functionality of Dynamics NAV 2015 and their aggressive push into the "mobile-first, cloud-first" world. They also showcased coming features for the next NAV release, codenamed "Corfu," due this fall.

Jesper Lachance Raebild began his presentation at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta with a nod to the global ubiquity of Microsoft Office, whose suite of features and templates are also being brought into the NAV fold. Office, he said, can boast 1.2 billion users around the world.

The community of NAV users, he added, may not quite match Office's one seventh of the world's population. But whereas in 2007 NAV's install base was just beyond 60,000, today it's topped 110,000. And the "mobile-first, cloud-first" push led by CEO Satya Nadella - who had delivered the conference keynote just two hours earlier -increases the software's draw to a broader user base still, Raebild said.

Karine Gagner, president of FDMT, a Montreal-based firm making toys for special education, says her company uses NAV's integrated operations with Office365 and Sharepoint as well as the entire package's seamless integration into the cloud.

"Anywhere we are, we can have the information. It's always at the tip of my finger," she says. "One of the big surprises for me was the dashboard, all the information. It'd be easy, just a few clicks. And I'd have all my cells, all my reps' cells.

"The other very nice thing it has is social engagement," she added. "I've been trying it for 10 days now. I manage my own brand, and I just got a new distributor in France. And I could already see what my brand was looking like from there. I ...