Microsoft Dynamics ERP Past, Present and Future

When Jason Gumpert asked me to create this article, at first I thought it was great. I love being overly dramatic, and a bit trite for the sake of good reading-and I believe that was Jason's thought too.

In short, 2012 is turning out to be the perfect time to look to the future of the Microsoft Dynamics ERP product line and try to start drawing some assumptions of where its future lies.  I'll start below (briefly) with my twenty years of Dynamics SL and GP experience that got me to this point - and this point of view. What I believe the Dynamics ERP ecosystem is looking at now, and in the future, is a product management strategy that is truly dominated by the technology, features, and roadmap of Dynamics AX. 

No, I'm not predicting the demise of GP, SL, or NAV; but it's hard to ignore the scope of improvement between AX 2009 and AX 2012.  Simply put - AX is catching up to, and surpassing, Dynamics GP and SL in a variety of areas, and from where I sit, that progress will continue to make it the company's flagship ERP product, no matter what your perspective.

Dynamics Past

Dynamics Past for me was the 20 year battle that Dynamics SL and Dynamics GP slugged out from 1980 to 2000. Dynamics SL, then called Solomon IV, was put on the map in 1985 when then product reviewer from Price Waterhouse, Pat Fitzhenry blessed Solomon with "Editor's Choice". Dynamics GP, or Great Plains at the time was always a serious competitor despite their lack of depth in the project accounting area and development tool area. They won lots of deals due to their rigorous standards for testing their code-it was usually very ...