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I have a customer interested in in the Dynamics GP 2010 Hyper-V image set of 3 virtual machines. The links only seem to be available on the partnersource site. Can this be distributed to customers?
Thanks,
Beth
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Hi Michael,
I completly agree and can feel your pain.... I'm working on the customer side for almost 10 years now with Dynamics GP, starting with version 7.5, and I would have loved to be able to 'try out' some of the features of GP before they were bought and installed, only to figure out later that it was not what we were looking for. A VM image is the perfect way to play around with a system without the fear of breaking somehting and quickly reverse to it's original status.
I think the decision of Microsoft to not put to 'public' availability the GP VM's comes from the fact that a lot of its content is not something that can be compared to a common server or workstation image (or even database system), because of the nature of the application. It took myself quite a few years (and this without any training) to figure out how GP works, and I started from the technical side (database and reporting).
To exploit the full potential of the product, you need to get some serious training before you can even start to use it, and Microsoft doesn't want probably to have to support all the 'wanna-be' customers that may at the end spread a negative feedback about the product, being not able to understand how it works.
As such you could actually build that VM completly from ground up yourself with the sole Fabrikam company, which allows you to unlock all the extensions and modules of GP to try them out... This way you achieve also a solid knowledge about how to setup, configure and deploye Dynamics GP. I do this in our company by dedicating a entire Test VM (we are using VMWare ESX) to plain around and test the service packs, updates, etc... You don't need expensive HW, you can do it on a well equiped laptop with lots of disk space and Microsoft Virtual Server.
I would not bet too much on Microsoft putting a GP VM on customer source for free download... but they could for example offer access to Hyper-V test labs on-line like they do with other Microsoft Server products on Technet training.
Beat,
Like Beth, I am a technical implementer of Dynamics GP and the Hyper-V set would be incredibly helpful in testing out the different implementation options like SQL failover mirroring, working with the analysis services cubes, etc. Through my evaluation, I can recommend or GP Dynamics options to license.
Having worked with non-disclosure agreements before, I don't understand what the issue is. It is a fairly standard legal document used for many business processes and I am sure customers would abide.
In contrast, maybe the GP Dynamics team could follow the Visual Studio teams in publishing a set of vm's for technical implementers. I have no doubt that the Visual Studio vm's that have been published by the ALM Ranger team and other groups have led to such a rapid adoption rate of Visual Studio products. I would think that the GP Dynamics team would want to follow that model and enjoy increased future adoption rates and sales.
Do you plan on making a set of Hyper-V images available in the future to Customers through CustomerSource similar in functionality that you provide to partners?
Michael
Hi Beth,
Normally those Hyper-V images are strickly reserved to the MBS Partners... and they do have to sign a non-disclosure agreement about that material, which means it is almost impossible for a customer to get them... Sorry to disappoint you. Nothing keeps you from asking your partner however. Be aware that those VM's are huge (2010 was around 45Gb), so it has to be carried on an external HDU.
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Almas Mahfooz
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