I've received an interesting set of official and unofficial news from friends involved in the Microsoft World Partner Conference that I like to share with all my readers. In a casual order, here is the list:
- If you're interested on Dynamics NAV as a possible ERP solution but you've small requirements in terms of users and functionalities, Microsoft has announced a new product called "Microsoft Dynamics Entrepeneur Solution", totally based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV standard and able to satisfy the needs of up to 5 users. The main feature of this new version is that it will be really fast to implement and totally wizard-driven. Unfortunately, seems that this new "sub-product" will be released on its first phase only in UK, NL, DE an ES (not Italy). This could be an interesting solution for who has simple business needs but that wants to start with an ERP ready to be upgraded to a major version. We'll see what happens on this field...
- A live demo of NAV 5.1 was shown, so I think that the first Beta releases will be ready for the end of this year. The interesting parts of this demo was the new role-based interface, the new webparts (that you can integrate into a Sharepoint site without Employee Portal) and the new web service layer (you can finally expose your codeunits as webservices available to other external application). I'm sure that you can understand the power...
- The incredible... Microsoft has annonced a new Microsoft Dynamic Mobile development framework. We'll have a native platform to build mobile applications connected to every Microsoft Dynamics product. I don't have too much news about this framework, but I can imagine it will be an extension of the actual compact framework. Obviosuly, it will be totally webservice-based, so available for webservice-enabled Dynamics applications.
- The last news is only for Microsoft Dynamics partners: it will be available a new "Certified for Microsoft Dynamics" brand, a new certification for partners that develops Microsoft Dynamics solutions and that are able to satisfy this requirements:
- submit 10 customers references
- pass a software solution test (like the actual from Veritest)
- submit a clear service plan (I don't know about details)
- be a Gold Certified Partner (I don't understand why this requirement... why to be Gold in order to prove that you can have a certified solution?).
These are the main news that I've received... the world around NAV is really on movement! 
Technorati Tag:
Dynamics NAV