Vendor listens to its Partners: latest news about Dynamics 356 'Tenerife' from Directions EMEA 2017

Directions US conference that took place few weeks ago left more questions than answers. There partners got impression that NAV On-Prem would not exist anymore. Few days after official refutation has been released, confirming On-Prem version would exist. However partners were nervous and confused. This is why Directions EMEA 2017 in Madrid was so much awaited, as it should have revealed all the answers. Having spent three tough days there, and having questioned all possible Microsoft personnel, available there, starting from Marko Perisic and ending with all the development team, we finally got more or less full picture of the Dynamics NAV/365 (or whatever it has been called now :-) ). Here is a summary of what I figured out, I hope it would eliminate all the speculations around the product's future.

So, here are the facts that were presented on the conference:

1. “Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition” is over. New customers will not be able to use that, current customers (those from US, Canada and UK) will most likely get some assistance to be transferred to a new product.
2. Actually, the “new product” will be released in spring of Y2018, most likely in May. The code name for this system is Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’, parenthesis mean this is a temporary name, and that will be replaced by some other real marketing name closer to the date of the release. The functionality of that system will be exactly the same as current On-Prem version on NAV (remember that current cloud version has limited functionality, lacking advanced warehousing, manufacturing, service and few other things). So, this will be fully functional system from the very beginning. It will be provided via two existential options:
   • Classical SaaS product from Microsoft, analogous to “Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition”, hosted in Microsoft cloud, and provided as a service. It could be customized in two ways:
     
     • Create Extensions and publish them as an App in AppSource – a special portal for partner’s solutions. When published, App is available to be installed into the standard system, deployed in the cloud, for all tenants, managed by a partner. It is not possible to customize this solution in an old-fashioned way (e.g., just by changing the standard code).
     • If there is a real need, the Extension could be installed for specific tenant only. This will allow to distinct functionality between customers, who are using partner’s standard solution, provided by Microsoft on SaaS basis.

     This option has its pros and cons. The best idea is that a partner would be able to deal with the same functionality for most of the customers, which would allow him to gain repeatability and reduce maintenance costs. All customers will use the same functionality as much as possible. Upgrades should also be very easy (“zero-cost” upgrades), assuming all the customizations, if any, are done via Apps. Microsoft will continue to release monthly updates and potentially can even automatically roll out them to your managed tenants. On the other hand, when you need to do a certain customization, you will have to publish official App for that. So far it is quite time-consuming process, lasting for weeks, if not months, and includes communication with product team, who will analyze your App and make a decision if it should be published or not. So there will be no “fast way” to fix something if needed.

   • The second option of deployment – and this has been a positive surprise for most partners – is a new possibility to publish as an App your own ISV-solution, which you can customize both via Extensions (preferably) or even in an old-fashioned way. Yes, this practically means that starting from May 2018 you can take current On-Prem version of NAV, customize it as much as you want, rewrite the standard code, and then try to publish it as an App in Microsoft AppSource, calling it however you want, with the ending “Powered by Dynamics 365”. This will allow partners to make such implementations to customers that they are not able to achieve via Extensions, but provide the functionality on SaaS basis still, fully using Microsoft cloud. This is a huge step of Microsoft towards those partners who were afraid to loose their business because of unability to make customizations, requires by customers. However, this option still has some limitations: not all requests will be allowed for publishing. Microsoft team will analyze your solution first, and greenlight will be given to those solutions that will be offered to multiple customers, or to one, but huge customer. They will most probably not allow publishing one hundred separate ISV Apps, one for each particular customer in your pool. Another interesting point will be installation of other Apps on the top of your own customized published ISV App. If it would be customized in an old-fashioned way (not via Extensions), there is a huge risk of conflicts when your customer will try to install some other’s App on top. So partners will carry this risk. They will either need to tell customers that their solution is not compatible with a certain App, or agree with the App owner to maintain dependences for your customizations. Microsoft says partners will need to do white-listing, that is, to verify and ensure that your customized solution will be compatible with all the horde of other published Apps. As you can imagine, that this would not be very much possible, assuming Apps will be published by hundreds or even thousands in the future. So try to avoid old-fashioned customizations, otherwise you would need to agree with other partners their dependences and manage and maintain them for eternity. Instead, try to use Extensions to reduce the incompatibility risk.
3. On-Prem version of Dynamics NAV stays available – please meet Dynamics NAV 2018! As ‘Tenerife’ version code base will be basically very close to On-Prem version, Microsoft will have very low costs to carry On-Prem version further. This is a sort of guarantee that On-Prem version will be also always available, and the decision to continue or discontinue will be rather political than technical, when time will come. So, no any decisions or plans to discontinue On-Prem version – all Microsoft representatives told it will be supported as long as there will be demand on the market for that. The release of Dynamics NAV 2018 is planned for December 1st, 2017, so less than in two months. In May 2018 there will be Dynamics NAV 2018 R2 released.

So what to say – the news could not be better. We are waiting for that impatiently! Let’s test pre-release builds. Keep in touch!