Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 launched!

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Wednesday this week we officially launched Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 at Convergence EMEA - what a relief. We have been working hard on this release for a long time and although you always know what you would have made better when you launch a product, I think that NAV 2009 is a great release and expect a lot of this product.

Kirill Tatarinov opened Convergence EMEA with his Keynote on Wednesday and talked a lot about the current situation for the Microsoft and the partners. He talked about how it is more necessary now than ever before to stay connected to help each other through this difficult crisis. But the keynote was not all about the crisis - he also announced the launch of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 - and we saw a demo of how a couple of personas was running the Role Tailored Client in NAV, we saw a forklift come on stage with packages and we saw how a mobile device was directly connected to NAV 2009 registering arrived packages in the Warehouse. We also saw how personalization can change NAV 2009 to become not just any other NAV - but your own personal NAV 2009.

There were a lot of other sessions around NAV 2009. Some about Web Services, some about warehousing, financial management, etc. etc.

Two of the sessions was about the TAP (Technical Adoption Program) and was called meet the partners and meet the customers. In these sessions people had the opportunity to ask questions to the partners and customers who had been part of the TAP.

The TAP had a goal of having 3 customers live on NAV 2009 before RTM. We smashed that goal and today, 10 customers in US, Denmark and Germany are live on NAV 2009. Dan Brown said in his keynote that we have over one year of server up-time before the product RTM's - this is something completely new for NAV.

Some of the statements from partners and customers I noted was:

  • I don't think we have had one single crash in NAV 2009 since we went live on September 11th 2008.
  • If I would do one thing different - I would only run the Role Tailored Client. Some users have stayed on the Classic Client and I think that the only reason for this is, that they have the option.
  • The users are more productive in the Role Tailored Client.
  • The help we have gotten through Microsoft in the TAP has been fantastic.
  • The users who only use NAV for 30 minutes a day have a harder time adjusting to the Role Tailored Client.
  • Some of the users who rely on fast data entry prefer the Classic Client.

A lot of positive feedback - and some negative. Of course we listen more to the negative feedback (as this helps us find out what we need to do better in the future), and I think it is fair to say that we have been doing a lot of investigation in order to be sure, that we know what we need to do.

So, if you ask me whether the product is ready - I would say it is ready. If you ask me whether we know how to make the product better - I would say yes - but don't we always, that is kind of the essence of product development.

Always working on the next version.

Stay tuned.

Freddy Kristiansen PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV