Got this news out at http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/01/HNmsbizsolutions_1.html So are we seeing the end of Granules Selection ? MS BUSINESS SOLUTIONS PREPS BASIC APPLICATION PACKAGES Posted April 01, 2003 7:20 AM Pacific Time Microsoft is preparing new “standard editions” of its Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon products to streamline its offerings for companies with up to 100 employees. The new basic versions of the software, due out later this year, replace existing entry-level products including Great Plains Standard Edition and Navision Standard Edition, a Microsoft Business Solutions spokeswoman in Europe said Tuesday. Regards Raymond Chew Singapore
This is no “real” new news. It was enclosed when they posted a job-ad for new programmers for this project (see http://www.mbsonline.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6001). But it’s still interesting that they now “go public” with this. It will be interesting so see more about this. Especially in regard to what exact products it’s to replace. My own guess that it should replace C5 (only DK), Small Business Manager (US and CA) and Great Plains (the product). But what about Navision (Attain)? That’s currently targetted at 5 to 100 users.
I think they try to create unified pricing for all product special(small business) editions. So small NSC’s will compete to each other even more on this segment of the market. Most small NSC’s work with only one product so they will have to prove that Attain better than Axapta or Great Plains or vice versa. This is going to be FUN.
A naive question: Could this means that the basic Navsion software stays pretty much the same while the canned “shrinkwrapped” implementation(e.g., Cronus) is changed?
Anything possible now … Look like a total revamp and heared rumour that future plans using framework.net for all MBS products , replacing current development tools.
Hi Valentin Gvozdev, You are correct, I have the same feeling too its going to be unified pricing. Just looking at all current Microsoft products structure and pricing will give us a glimpse of the likely expectation. Eg. Win 2000 Server, Win 2000 Enterprise Server & Win 2000 DataCenter Server … So we might expect this ? 1) Navision Basic Edition (which includes FM) Navision SCM Edition (which includes FM + Sales & AR + Purchases + AP, Inventory) 2) Navision CRM Edition (which includes SCM + CRM) 3) Navision Warehouse Management System Optional Add-0n 4) Navision Manufacturing Optional Add-0n 5) Navision E-Business Optional Add-On
In North America during the past year, there has been a “Special Edition” of Navision which included only 5 users or less and was priced significantly lower than the regular prices. There were also limitations on what functionality you could purchase (not full Distribution, not full Manufacturing). If you wanted more than 5 users or the other functionality, you had to move up to the full price. The granuales and everything else for the Special Edition was the same as the regular product. It was just a way of marketing the product to the small sites to get them “into the fold”. I believe the new “standard editions” will be much the same thing for the time being (limits on what granules and how many users). If for no other reason than there hasn’t been time to prepare real new versions of the software.
Dave, I think you hit the nail on the head with your statement. The Special Edition was not exactly marketed with great ferver in the past and this may simply be one of the first examples of the marketing force that Microsoft can exert. We as NSCs have not “officially” been notified of anything in regards to specific product changes…so if we don’t know anything about this, then it’s probably not a significant change going on.
Hi Dave and Bill, So far for this “Special Edition” of Navision in USA for the past 1 year, how successful is it ? Does it really helps NSC to get prospects “into the fold” ?
I think it definitely has made an impact on the prospects that we get in front of…imagine getting a 5 user system for half the normal Navision price. The problem, as always, is that we haven’t gotten in front of that many more prospects on the lower end. So on one hand, yes it does really help increase the market share. However, if you look at the overall effect of Navision’s “Special Edition”, it’s probably not making that much of an impact.
I agree with all of Bill’s statements (as usual [;)]).
I remember seeing this special edition in Belgium too, in this case called Small Business Edition. The prices of the granules are half of the normal prices, with indeed a limitation of a maximum of 5 users and the inability to order advanced modules. In case the customer wants more he has to pay the difference between the purchased granules and the normal price and can from then on upgrade to every granule. Peter Willemse