Microsoft

Are we “all in”?

  • Reading time:6 mins read

image“Are we all in” – asks Hunter Richards on The Software Advice blog in his Monday post, giving a view of Microsoft’s Cloud strategy in perspective of Microsoft Dynamics. He argues that while Microsoft is indeed betting heavily on the Cloud, its Dynamics line of products is not nearly ready for the Cloud.

In his argumentation, Hunter gives four challenges that Microsoft is facing, and that are main obstacles in Microsoft’s way to Cloud Dynamics ERP: architecture, multiple products, partner channel and market readiness.

I believe in the Cloud. And I believe in Microsoft Dynamics ERP in the Cloud. So I do not agree with Hunter’s views on this, and here I’m offering a counter view. Okay, I must say that my views are limited exclusively to NAV, so whatever I say applies to NAV, and may not apply to AX, SL or GP.

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7 habits of highly unsuccessful sales people

  • Reading time:4 mins read

imageOne of the takeaways from my Microsoft experience will undoubtedly by my attendance of Microsoft Services University, where all Microsoft’s consultants are ramped-up in a 15-or-so days intensive program. One of the things I will never forget, is when a presenter (kill me if I can remember his name) asked the 100-strong audience:

– How many of you here work in sales?

A couple of shy hands went up.

– Well, let me tell you something – the guy continued – you ALL work in sales!

And yes, he was absolutely right. If you are a consultant, like it or not, you do work in sales. So, one off-topic post, which is not completely (or not at all) off-topic is a short write-up of a post by Drew Stevens on RainToday.com, with (unpredictably, eh?) the same title as this.

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Special Offers for Microsoft exam takers – Hurry!

  • Reading time:1 min read

specialoffersAre you aware of the Special Offers on Microsoft Learning Products? Well, you should be: Microsoft Learning website offers many fantastic bargains. There are two specific offers I’d like you to check, which are going to be there for a limited time only.

Good luck with your exams!

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Is Microsoft About To Enter The EMR Playground?

  • Reading time:2 mins read

image Austin Merritt of Software Advice has posted an interesting analysis of a possibility of Microsoft entering the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR) market through acquiring a strong existing player.

Almost a decade ago, Microsoft has aggressively entered the ERP market through acquiring a series of ERP vendors, gaining a large customer base in practically all business and industry verticals—except medical.

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Panorama’s ERP Report reveals important facts

  • Reading time:3 mins read

For a long time, the ruler of project reports was Standish Group’s (in)famous Chaos report, which analyzed IT project success/failure factors. While many of the Chaos report’s findings applied to ERP implementation, the report as a whole was primarily about software development projects. And as we all know, implementing ERP is not the same thing as software development. Hopefully.

Panorama Consulting Group, an independent ERP consulting firm from Denver, Colorado, has conducted a market research in 2008, that explains ERP implementation project success factors and reveals some interesting metrics about real ERP costs, duration and benefits. Finally, we have a decent ERP project report, which reveals some important facts about Microsoft Dynamics.

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Welcome to NavigateIntoSuccess.com

  • Reading time:2 mins read

My dear Loyal Visitor,

imageNavigate Into Success blog has moved to the new domain:

http://www.NavigateIntoSuccess.com/

I believe it deserved it.

This blog has started as a hobby a year and a half ago. It took it six months before a first visitor arrived to it, and about nine months before it really kicked-off.

Today, there are about 160 daily web visitors, 70 subscribers to my Feedburner feed, and 60 subscribers to WordPress feed – all in all there are almost 300 hundred people reading this stuff every day.

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Mystery laptop

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I had no clue how good my laptop was. Seriously. Today it kicked ass of an 8-processor server.

Tomorrow we have a go-live of a Microsoft Dynamics NAV deployment, with manufacturing customized to support configure-to-order functionality. Refreshing manufacturing orders now calculates dynamic BOMs and routings, and it takes time.

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Architectures: Good, Bad and Ugly

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Four months ago I attended a conference, where I had a chance to listen to Miha Kralj, an architect at Microsoft, talk about architectures. It was one of the best presentations I ever attended, and ever since I had this topic in queue, but never really had chance to write about it. Most of the stuff he talked about reminded me of some bad experiences about architectures on projects I’ve worked on. Most of stuff here is also not my original contribution to the universal pool of knowledge, and I reuse it with the permission of the author, so Miha, thanks! What I did, however, is that I applied general principles to specific Microsoft Dynamics NAV situations.

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WinDays 2008: Aftermath

  • Reading time:3 mins read

WinDays 2008 are over. Somehow, this conference has become a milestone, in Croatian ICT community, in Microsoft community, even in my life. I met a friend there, one of those I only meet there, and realized just how quickly the year turned. Obviously, I contemplated too much, and partied too little, something to really get worried about.

Anyway, the presentations I delivered made me think about the future of this blog. It started pretty randomly, as a place where I simply dumped anything that crossed my mind, so you had all sorts of content, from programming, to development, to functionality, to theory. When I look at my blog to-do list, there is even more chaos to it, with topics ranging from SQL optimization all the way to business process reengineering. I realized I need more focus.

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