|
Article:
Microsoft Great Plains version 8.5: upgrade, customization, VBA, Crystal Reports - preliminary highlights for consultant by: Andrew Karasev Microsoft Great Plains is one of the Microsoft Business Solutions family ERP products: Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, Solomon, Small Business Manager. MBS also has Microsoft CRM - Client Relation Management software and Microsoft Retail Management System (Microsoft RMS) Microsoft Great Plains 8.5 is scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2005. It is usual practice when you here announcements and then you are notified about software release delays. Expect first the version to be released for US market and then you can expect Spanish and Canadian French version. Satellites or third parties are usually released in the following six month period. From our Microsoft Business Solutions insiders we could give you the rumors we have heard Version 8.5 seems to be rather a big service pack to version 8.0. Let me give you some historical review. Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics of version 7.0 was merged with Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics and this was basically a foundation of Microsoft Great Plains version 7.5 Microsoft Great Plains version 7.5 was the last version for legacy database platforms: Pervasive SQL 2000 and Ctree. Version 8.0 and higher are available on MS SQL Server and MSDE only Microsoft bought a product from eOne Solutions (in Australia) called SmartList Builder. This new feature allows users to create their own SmartList without being limited to the available 'folders' on the standard SmartList's left panel. We have yet to know more about this but the consultants in Australia are really enthusiastic about this. Upgrade expectations. As our experience indicates - Microsoft is working on the ERP application migration (Project Green). This means that MBS is rather concerned on it's ERP applications modules interoperability - consider the strong point of Navision - Manufacturing module should somehow communicate and seamlessly work with GL platform - more likely Great Plains financials - Great Plains systems manager and general ledger. So, and again this is our personal opinion - MBS is not bringing a lot of new ERP functionality into Great plains version 8.'5
|
