At the end of March, during its annual conference for North American customers, Convergence 2004, Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) division previewed upcoming versions of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions: MBS Axapta, MBS Great Plains, MBS Navision, MBS Solomon, Microsoft CRM, and related services. The main takeaway from the conference was that MBS continues to invest in its current offerings to provide customers with the enriched functionality they need to remain competitive in today's evolving marketplace and to exploit their existing information technology (IT) investments by streamlining business processes, and by more easily accessing the information they need to make educated business decisions.
Given the immense ongoing development undertaking, which began at MBS even before its strategy was espoused in 2002 (see Microsoft Lays Enforced-Concrete Foundation for Its Business Solutions), the incremental approach towards building a more complete enterprise applications portfolio seems logical, if not the only possible option. MBS strives to not only retain the existing install base within the maturing ERP product lines, but also to stimulate the acceptance of recent ERP-adjacent product extensions, some of which are featuring parts of the latest Web services-based technology, and drive sales or upgrades of high-volume products like Microsoft Office 2003 within the MBS' large install base that is nearing the 300,000 mark.
Hence, one should not be surprised by MBS' recent, more upbeat results, in a great part due to up-selling so-called "surrounding" applications like Microsoft Business Network (MBN), Microsoft Demand Planner, or Microsoft Business Portal to its existing ERP users (see Microsoft Keeps on Rounding Up Its Business Solutions). Namely, late in 2003, as to enhance its current line of ERP business solutions and service offerings in terms of helping its small, mid-market segment and even certain large corporate customers improve the effectiveness of current ERP investments, MBS announced the general availability of MBN, and the upcoming delivery of two demand planning modules.
During Convergence 2004, however, MBS announced ongoing momentum and upcoming plans to expand the reach of Microsoft Business Network to a broader audience of trading partners, whereby it also highlighted the solution's success thus far and road map for the future. Microsoft Business Network (MBN) is a combination of on-premise software that is integrated with Microsoft Office, eventually with all MBS ERP applications (albeit currently only with MBS Great Plains) or with Microsoft BizTalk Server, and hosted Web services. MBN works with a set of Web services that facilitate connecting to and swapping information with trading partners. These Web services will be hosted by Microsoft, in part because smaller enterprises may not have a dedicated broadband Internet connection, and partly because some companies might not want to expose a Web service call outside their firewall. Future versions might nevertheless allow customers to manage the Web services on-site or to work with a third-party hosting partner.
Given the immense ongoing development undertaking, which began at MBS even before its strategy was espoused in 2002 (see Microsoft Lays Enforced-Concrete Foundation for Its Business Solutions), the incremental approach towards building a more complete enterprise applications portfolio seems logical, if not the only possible option. MBS strives to not only retain the existing install base within the maturing ERP product lines, but also to stimulate the acceptance of recent ERP-adjacent product extensions, some of which are featuring parts of the latest Web services-based technology, and drive sales or upgrades of high-volume products like Microsoft Office 2003 within the MBS' large install base that is nearing the 300,000 mark.
Hence, one should not be surprised by MBS' recent, more upbeat results, in a great part due to up-selling so-called "surrounding" applications like Microsoft Business Network (MBN), Microsoft Demand Planner, or Microsoft Business Portal to its existing ERP users (see Microsoft Keeps on Rounding Up Its Business Solutions). Namely, late in 2003, as to enhance its current line of ERP business solutions and service offerings in terms of helping its small, mid-market segment and even certain large corporate customers improve the effectiveness of current ERP investments, MBS announced the general availability of MBN, and the upcoming delivery of two demand planning modules.
During Convergence 2004, however, MBS announced ongoing momentum and upcoming plans to expand the reach of Microsoft Business Network to a broader audience of trading partners, whereby it also highlighted the solution's success thus far and road map for the future. Microsoft Business Network (MBN) is a combination of on-premise software that is integrated with Microsoft Office, eventually with all MBS ERP applications (albeit currently only with MBS Great Plains) or with Microsoft BizTalk Server, and hosted Web services. MBN works with a set of Web services that facilitate connecting to and swapping information with trading partners. These Web services will be hosted by Microsoft, in part because smaller enterprises may not have a dedicated broadband Internet connection, and partly because some companies might not want to expose a Web service call outside their firewall. Future versions might nevertheless allow customers to manage the Web services on-site or to work with a third-party hosting partner.
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