Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015: More details, more viewpoints emerge

Last week we noted that the announcement of general availability for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 seemed un-necessarily brief. Microsoft had shared lots of NAV 2015 details in person at Decisions US but at the same time they remained nearly silent about the product in public forums like their own blog, leaving the conversation in the hands of an eager and willing but un-managed group of expert bloggers. (That communications situation has since changed, which is discussed below.)

That article generated a couple of interesting responses with very different perspectives. One industry watcher wondered about the balance of marketing powers within the Microsoft Business Solutions division (MBS) and whether Dynamics CRM's upcoming release announcement may have sucked all the air out of the room, so to speak. Further, this person hypothesized, could the CRM team have felt a need to steal the headlines, leading the NAV team to tone down their own communications? The Dynamics CRM 2015 announcement emerged during the NAV 2015 reveal at Directions US. There's no evidence about any of this, of course, but the timing was interesting, as is the idea that Dynamics NAV and CRM are on a competitive footing within MBS politics.

The other view point came from a veteran NAV professional who responded to the piece by noting that NAV 2015 shouldn't be compared to Dynamics GP or CRM in terms of how it is marketed because NAV has become more of a platform than a product.

"NAV is a development environment rather than a complete ERP package," this person wrote. "It depends ...