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Opinion: With Microsoft Dynamics 365 SMB plans firmed, NAV & CRM partners can plan for a bright future

by James Crowter
Managing Director, Clever Dynamics

Coming away from Directions EMEA today, I'm happy with what I've heard and the exciting future we have with the Dynamics SMB product set. It has been a busy week with a seemingly endless flow of conversations and presentations containing a huge amount of information that we must now absorb and work out how to best exploit.

Let's kill dead some of the ideas that have been circulating. First, the Dynamics NAV product has a confirmed future in the Dynamics 365 family. It has the support of all the Microsoft management and investment in the product will continue at their current insane levels. Second, there will be no cut in headcount for this year or next, which is all a public company like Microsoft will ever commit to.

Listening to the unequivocal statements from not just Marko Perisic but other senior execs in the product marketing organisation, the roadmap delivered in Wednesdays keynote is a plan that everyone is signed up too. Yes, there have been discussions (hence the Chinese whispers/game of telephone) but the outcome is all we ever could have expected, from my point of view. And that is:

  • Dynamics NAV 2018 will be released on 1st December 2017
  • Dynamics 365 Tenerife will be released in Spring 2018 in the cloud
  • Tenerife will be connected to the Common Data Service (CDS)
  • It will work naturally alongside any of the other Dynamics 365 apps
  • Dynamics 365 for Sales (second price point) is also available Spring 2018
  • Dynamics 365 for Marketing will go to preview (didn't state date but guess at Spring 2018)

That means we need to have a little more patience. Yes, I'd like it tomorrow but then I don't want it ...

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Business Central Customer Engagement Directions EMEA 2017 Dynamics 365 Dynamics CRM Dynamics NAV Microsoft Corporate Power Automate Tenerife
About James Crowter

I'm passionate about how businesses can improve their efficiency by getting process optimal more of the time. For the last twenty five years I've worked to help organisations of all sizes and types implement the ERP & CRM software that typically they decide they need when things are going wrong. I've seen that work unbelievably well and enabled those organisations to rapidly grow but I've also had some hard projects over that time where it's felt more like warfare at times.

Since 1996 (and version 1.01) I've been working with a small Danish product called Navision that's now become Microsoft's Dynamics NAV and I've also been using and consulting around Microsoft CRM since 2005. As managing Director of one of the longest established first Navision and now Microsoft Dynamics partners I've been involved in the complete history including numerous product councils and system design reviews. It's my privilege to know many of the key Microsoft executives and product designers and have insight into both where the products are now and their future direction.

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