Well returned from Directions EMEA in Madrid, let me try to sum up my own personal impressions. Firstly, a thank you to the Directions EMEA team, who fought a (sometimes) losing battle against the conference hotel and the AV-company, whom - I suspect - they imported from Tora Tora or somewhere like that (sorry Tora Tora [:)]). I don’t think we will hear much from the Directions EMEA committee the next couple of days, because they will be sleeping. However, the important part was the message to the Dynamics NAV (365 or Tenerife) community. And I must give it up for Microsoft. The message this time, was clear and it was repeated many times. So, what was the message? Dynamics NAV will continue to live with full functionality but delivered in three versions: Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” in the cloud As a business application in the cloud where ISVs can develop and market solutions Dynamics NAV 2018 on premise The name “Tenerife” will be replaced with a suitable name later, but let me just give my own personal suggestion: Dynamics 365 Nav That would link the future and the past together and limit the confusion we have seen from the end-user customers this last year. The message was also this: The Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” will be customizable and not only with extensions Ok, so what about functionality? The borders between Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” and Office 365 will be more fluent and the seamless integrations to other cloud solutions like Power Apps, Microsoft Flow, Power BI, Cortana and many others, open up for a whole new world for many of us. This is also due to the introduction of the “Common Data Model” which will enable programs to utilize and identify the data structure across different platforms. The keynote examples with integrating Outlook with the Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” sales quote functionality really shows the possibilities in the future. However, I am sure that the general manager at Microsoft, Marko Perisic hardcoded Cortana to suggest that he is only 35 years old [:)] As the new functionality to the on-premise NAV 2018, well we will just have to wait and se. The release will this time be split into two parts: An initial release in November? And a R2 release in the spring. The clearness of the message has given my customers a lot of reassurance. I deal with many manufacturing and large warehouse solutions and they are not yet ready to convert to the cloud. Traveling in countries that are a little further away from the Western Europe and North American mindset, I meet companies still struggling to get a decent power supply. Therefore, they find it necessary to have own local power plants and back-up generators. These companies rely on whatever solution is more stable and that often means on premise installations and sometimes even paper-based. Manufacturing companies are also very conservative and they still rely on their old versions of Dynamics NAV (If it works – Don’t fix it) and versions like Navision 4.0, 5.0 or 2009 are still active at many of these companies. That being said, I am optimistic about the future and see the both the opportunities and possibilities in the cloud, and maybe it is only a matter of time before the prediction of Thomas J. Watson Jr., CEO of IBM in 1943: “I think there is a world market for about five computers” will come through after all. Maybe we will end up with tablets and smartphones and we will all be connected to one or more of the “five big machines”.
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