Skip to main content

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central reaches general availability, with promise of smooth NAV transition to come

by Jason Gumpert
Editor, MSDynamicsWorld.com

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central & NAV roadmap

Microsoft launches Dynamics 365 Business Central today, April 2, with plans to reach both new prospects looking for a SaaS ERP solution and existing Dynamics NAV customers looking for continuity.

The latest roadmap for Business Central now shows that NAV as a brand name will have no further releases after NAV 2018. There had been plans for NAV 2018 R2 in the autumn of 2018 but that appears to have been scrapped in favor of a move directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central for both cloud and on-premises in the second half of 2018.

In a new announcement, Microsoft GM Marko Perisic states that the decision is not an indication of any disruption in the roadmap or release plans for existing NAV customers. "For the existing partners and customers, this will be just another upgrade, like they would do for Dynamics NAV, with a name change," he writes.

Dynamics NAV and Business Central run the same code base, Perisic and other Microsoft officials have stated multiple times. That commitment will preserve NAV user and partner investments, Perisic re-iterated, whether customers choose to stay on-premises or look to migrate to the public cloud:

Because Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV run the same application code base, this empowers us to smoothly transition all our Dynamics NAV partners and customers into Dynamics 365 Business Central. Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud first solution, designed for the age of digital transformation powered by the cloud. But it will not be a cloud only solution. In the ...

FREE Membership Required to View Full Content:

Joining MSDynamicsWorld.com gives you free, unlimited access to news, analysis, white papers, case studies, product brochures, and more. You can also receive periodic email newsletters with the latest relevant articles and content updates.
Learn more about us here

About Jason Gumpert

As the editor of MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason oversees all editorial content on the site and at our events, as well as providing site management and strategy. He can be reached at jgumpert@msdynamicsworld.com.

Prior to co-founding MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason was a Principal Software Consultant at Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), where he implemented solutions, trained customers, managed software development, and spent some time in the pre-sales engineering organization. He has also held consulting positions at CSC Consulting and Monitor Group.

More about Jason Gumpert