With Limited Public Details, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 7 Capabilities and Questions Abound

While Microsoft has kept its demonstrations and discussions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 7 at recent conferences carefully under NDA, enough detail has emerged through outside reports to draw some conclusions about where the company actually stands in its push to get the next major release, and the first one to work in Windows Azure, out the door.

Azure support is coming, but not much to show yet

While a Microsoft Dynamics Community blog post earlier this week claimed that a demo at the Directions US event showed NAV 7 in Azure accessed through a browser interface, first-hand reports we've heard described this demo, which was under NDA, as far more limited and consisting mainly of screenshots, not much live software. Microsoft has not yet returned our requests for more information on this.

Microsoft also set a release date of "September/October 2012". While this is still within earlier roadmap estimates like this slide deck posted in September 2011 by Columbus UK, it is well beyond earlier estimates of 2010/2011 and some in the field have questioned whether the late 2012 date represents a delay while Microsoft continues to work on the readiness of NAV 7 for Azure deployment.

What does NAV in Azure mean for the partner channel?

Despite some questions about the cloud, it is clear that both ISVs and VARs in the NAV channel are facing major adjustments.  Microsoft is pushing to get a ...