How to understand Microsoft Dynamics products?

Question

What is the difference? They all are business management solutions. They do the same? Some sort of different editions? Do they use same platform?

Dynamics NAV

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 is a comprehensive business management solution that helps people work faster and smarter, and gives your business the flexibility to adapt to new opportunities and growth.

Dynamics AX

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is a comprehensive business management solution for mid-sized and larger organizations that works like and with familiar Microsoft software to help your people improve productivity.

Dynamics GP

Microsoft Dynamics GP is a richly featured business management solution that allows you to use familiar, powerful software to operate and grow your business.

Dynamics SL

Microsoft Dynamics SL is a business management solution specialized to help project-driven midsize organizations obtain reports and business analysis, while helping increase efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction.

Answer 1

Generally speaking each of these products were purchased separately, and Microsoft is kind of trying to put them into a general business, but has not actually integrated them into a common ERP platform (yet anyway). For example, NAV was formerly Navision, GP was formerly Great Plains. I think AX was also part of the Navision purchase, but was a different product that Navision had themselves purchased.

Each has a separate accounting implementation that it came with, so there is a lot of overlap in the non-differentiators like accounting.

Basically they are targeted at different types of businesses. SL is for a service oriented business (like a software consulting firm). NAV would be more targeted at an inventory based operation.

I didn't investigate all of their options in depth to know all of the similarities and differences, but in a former job I had to look into NAV, AX and GP and that is what I recall it being all about.

I agree with Dave Markle, the marketing is engineered to create the maximum possible confusion. The executive suite buys these things and then marketing has to break its head to figure out how to sell and differentiate each one. As you can see, they didn't do a great job.

Answer 2

The marketing-ese is in full effect with the Dynamics products. All these packages were acquisitions by Microsoft, and they are making an effort to bring them to market under one brandname: Dynamics. They are aiming at the SMB market. It's not positioned to compete with SAP. Both are client-server apps.

I've worked with Dynamics SL (previously named Solomon). It's an accounting suite, with modules for Accounts Payable + Receivable, Inventory, General Ledger, Purchasing, Reporting, Cost Accounting, Purchase Orders, etc.

It's all VBA goodness. The database underlying would make your blood curdle. It's denormalized like you wouldn't believe. I guess saying 'denormalized' would indicate that it previously normalized. I got the feeling it was never normalized. Full of technical debt.

Foreign keys are an unknown entity in SL. DBAs would have trouble taking the architecture seriously (e.g. columns actually named like User1 and User2 to indicate a custom field on the User Interface).

Dynamics GP is more oriented towards payroll. I cannot comment on its inner architecture.

They all run on the same platform. Client executables connecting to SQL Server. The forms design is like the Win95 and sometimes Win3.1 paradigm. Don't let the Outlook-like main screen fool you in the screenshot; it's the only one getting the upgrade treatment.

The licensing model is a killer, and so my previous encounter with Solomon had everyone running the same EXE from the network share. It was notoriously slow, and rarely a compliment from users on its responsiveness.

Entire consultancy businesses are built around these products. Supply and demand allow those consultants to charge a substantial amount, relative to the web-app and other line-of-business consultants.