Hi, everyone, I hope you are doing well and having a great day!
Just this week, we cut our first release candidate (“RC1”) for NAV 2013, which means we’re very close to RTM and shipping the product to you. I can’t say enough about this product and how it’s come together. But I’ll certainly try, since it’s so much fun to talk about!
Dynamics NAV 2013 has powerful and diverse new application functionality, ranging from charting to cash flow analysis to time sheet registration to assembly to expanded out-of-the-box RoleCenters to Unicode. Have to catch my breath for a second … The user experience innovations range from the SharePoint and web clients to end user productivity features on the rich client to improved integrations with OneNote and Excel. From all the feedback we’ve gotten, even diehard classic client fans will be on RoleCenters very soon! The runtime investments increase performance and scalability for transactions and reporting. They’re also built to run optimally on Azure as well as to improve partner-hosted performance. To improve manageability we created a new admin console and added APIs for powerful scripting. The server also now complies with the rigorous Microsoft’s Common Engineering Criteria (CEC) server “hygiene” standards. In response to your needs for developing on pages, we’ve enhanced tooling substantially around page design and debugging (and testing!). Finally, we’ve rethought rapid deployment through the new Rapid Start module. That’s just off the top of my head! Perhaps, more than anything, this release has been about quality: NAV 2013 exceeds every quality bar for any release of NAV we’ve had thus far. I guess that’s what I’m proudest about.
Together, this array of functionality and capability manifests our value proposition for the release and the product – Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 is “A Business Solution from Microsoft.”
I hope you go to PartnerSource later this month, download the product, and get to know it better. Then, go aggressively sell it to new customers and upgrade your existing customers!
Thanks to all the people who’ve made NAV 2013 happen, both externally as partners and customers providing feedback through our Technical Adopter and Beta programs and internally on the Microsoft development team. Collectively, you’ve all done an amazing job getting out a great product.
It’s an exciting time to be in the NAV business and for the NAV product. From the tremendous energy at a sold-out Directions EMEA in Rome to the release of NAV 2013 this month to what I expect will happen at Directions in the Phoenix later this fall, I feel the momentum growing. Perhaps that’s why it’s such a bittersweet time for me personally. As some of you already know, after four years living in Denmark, my family and I moved back to the U.S. this summer to be closer to our extended family. As a result, after four and half years as the General Manager of NAV R & D, my time has come to say farewell and thank you for all the incredible memories I’ve had with you our partners, with the Microsoft team in Vedbaek, and with the product itself. It’s been an amazing experience! Thank you all very, very much! My successor, Erik Tiden, is a person worthy of this great community, and I welcome him warmly. (I’ll let him tell his story in the next blog.)
Best of luck to you all, and I hope our paths cross again soon.
Sincerely,
–Dan