Microsoft SharePoint is the platform for portal-based collaboration and document management/enterprise content management (ECM). The product also works tightly with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Unified Communications (UC), both Microsoft technologies that will be described in detail later on. This integration provides great visibility for workflows related to documents and document libraries, and improving collaboration through the “presence” and “click to communicate” features.

Today, SharePoint is the universal portal technology for the Dynamics portfolio; for example, in Dynamics AX 2009, the AX Enterprise Portal (formerly Axapta Enterprise Portal) is now based on SharePoint. The portal was devised from the standard SharePoint design experience, whereby a gallery of Dynamics AX Web parts is now available, making it very simple to bring to the surface Dynamics AX data (with the inherent AX security model enforced) on SharePoint portal pages.

In addition to Web parts, other strategies for SharePoint integration are its Business Data Catalog (BDC) Web Services feature (currently used within Microsoft Dynamics GP [evaluate this product] and Dynamics CRM [evaluate this product]), and data binding (within Dynamics AX). It is likely that BDC services will grow further in importance, and we should expect a broad Microsoft Dynamics consistency around this feature.

To expand further on the use of the Microsoft SQL Server database that was discussed at the end of Part 1, all Microsoft Dynamics reporting capabilities will in the future come natively (which also means without new license fees) through SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and associated tools. This was first developed within Microsoft Dynamics GP 9 and Microsoft Dynamics AX [evaluate this product], and will be adopted more broadly across other Dynamics products. In the Microsoft Dynamics AX 4 release, there was the capability of creating ad hoc reports, whereas most recently released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 also uses SSRS for all production reports.

Innovation is now surfacing as a result of integration between the Microsoft Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET) development platform and SQL Server. Namely, there is now the ability to launch Precision Report Designer and maintain the Dynamics AX semantic models in VS.NET and to pass the data in a closed-loop manner to and from Dynamic AX logic models. These models can in turn look into the Dynamics AX database (SQL Server) via database secure views. The future development will make these currently static models dynamic for report-customization purposes.

Along similar lines will be the use of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), whereby all Dynamics role centers within the user experience (UX) project (mentioned in Part 1) will feature embedded contextual business intelligence (BI). Currently, Dynamics AX 2009 has the cube generation capability, whereby analytics perspectives have been added to the business logic model, and which can generate Data Source Views (DSV’s) and Online Analytic Processing (OLAP) cubes. The future research and development (R&D) forays will likely enable the round-trip (between VS.NET and SQL Server) advanced features that will require similar features to the abovementioned reporting tools.

As a little caveat, these native reporting and analytics features will not be automatically available to the users of the proprietary Microsoft Dynamics NAV C/Side database (about half of the install base) and Dynamics AX Oracle instances. For Dynamics NAV customers using the older C/Side database, most of them upgrade to SQL Server when they move to a new NAV version anyway, while Dynamics AX users on Oracle can access the new reporting and analytics features by adding SSRS and SSAS to their deployment. Still, Microsoft will, for the foreseeable future, honor the ongoing support for these databases alongside its SQL Server.

Still, although WPF provides a visually appealing, familiar and intuitive UI, it comes with some trade-offs, specifically in memory utilization (being hardware intensive), the need to be hooked to the network, and a much greater dependency on Microsoft software. For instance, IFS doesn’t use WPF today for IFS Applications’ UI simply because of hardware needs: running WPF requires quite a hefty PC in terms of memory, and preferably the (possibly still unstable) Windows Vista platform.

We are talking here about IFS’ upcoming next-generation UI, which had for some time been called Aurora, but is now called IFS Enterprise Explorer (IEE). Namely, to prevent any confusion about Aurora being a separate product from IFS Applications, IFS has recently clarified its naming conventions.

Aurora is now a development project that will yield several enhancements to IFS Applications, all with a focus on ease-of-use and user productivity. The first deliverable as part of the Aurora project is IEE, the new graphical user interface (GUI) for IFS Applications. It is important to note that after IEE is released, the Aurora project will continue, yielding future enhancements.

In any case, IEE is interesting, to say the least, for leveraging Microsoft UI technology to create a look (albeit not yet the multi-touch touch screen, handgestures, etc. feel) of Apple iPhone (on top of Oracle database and Java-based application servers on the back end: some mix of technologies from adversaries, indeed). It is becoming quite obvious that the iPod and iPhone generation is our future workforce, who require well designed tools that they “love” to interact with. At the same time, they accept no excuses for “Why can’t I…?” questions, such as, for instance, “Why can’t I search in the enterprise application in the same way that I search on Google?”

At the end of the day, the design goal is to achieve more with fewer staff members, who thus have broader responsibilities, are able to handle the unexpected, collaborate with colleagues, and be more productive. In other words, the market drivers are the new and engaging design and user productivity. Consumer information technology (IT) and the web are leading the way, and are also becoming quite important for business applications.

To that end, prior to the IEE undertaking, IFS developed a pervasive enterprise search engine that attempts to think the way people think (e.g., “I need that fault report about the fire alarm not working”), and not the way enterprise systems think (i.e., “I want go into the preventive maintenance module where, in the service request folder, I will start the fault report screen, in which I shall then make a query on the description field containing any words followed by the words ‘fire alarm’ followed by any other words again”).

However, what has somewhat intrigued me is Microsoft’s not-so-vocal touting and promoting of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), although it is an intrinsic part of the .NET Framework. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the tool has not yet been used within the Dynamics set in earnest, although Lawson Software and Verticent would be the two independent software vendors (ISV) that I am aware of deploying it.

Both vendors tout WPF’s rich UIs that support virtually infinite customizations and business process compositions using Microsoft applications. Other Microsoft-centric ISVs either support only a limited number of specific and prescriptive business scenarios, or use a combination of technology products (for example, Microsoft Office Business Applications (OBAs), Visual Studio.NET, and proprietary interfaces and UI tools) to come up with similar custom scenarios. Again, Microsoft currently uses WPF very selectively in Dynamics UIs, for example, in the Dynamics AX graphical view of the organization structure of the business.

With its Smart Office offering, Lawson is not the first to leverage Microsoft Office to deliver not only manager and employee self-service, but much more as well. In fact, I could think of the joint SAP and Microsoft Duet product, Epicor Productivity Pyramid, QAD .NET UI, SYSPRO Office Integration [SOI]), IFS Business Analytics, and so on.

However, by leveraging WPF, Lawson embeds manager and employee self-service functionality more directly into Microsoft Outlook than Duet (which is more of an add-on launched from Outlook as an integrated pane) and most other vendors’ OBA solutions. Fore more details on Lawson Smart Office, see my earlier blog post on the vendor’s CUE 2008 conference and the Gartner Dataquest Insight report by Bob Anderson entitled “Lawson Raises the Bar With Differentiating ERP User Interface.”

Curiously, Lawson has deployed another non-mainstream Microsoft technology, Microsoft Office Groove. It is a peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration platform, providing an outstanding base for collaboration (document exchange) scenarios that involve teams with sometimes disconnected participants. Microsoft claims that future product releases will improve the alignment for collaboration between Groove and SharePoint.

Lawson’s technology decision was likely owing to Groove’s concept of “shared workspaces” and Lawson’s view that individuals live in a “space” where they do most of their work. For example, a manager really “lives in” Microsoft Outlook, and should be able to do all his/her work from there. An accountant lives in Microsoft Excel and should be able to work from there. A mobile technician lives in the cell phone/personal data assistant (PDA) metaphor, where the Apple iPhone or Palm Treo similarity of UI can come in handy.

Coming back to the second issue from the beginning of this blog series, i.e., Microsoft Business Division’s (MBD) Profit & Loss (P&L) statement, at the Convergence 2008 user conference, the giant stated the following stats for Microsoft Dynamics:

* A 26 percent revenue growth in Q2 2008;
* Nearly 300,000 customers worldwide;
* Nearly 10,000 business partners worldwide;
* About 1,700 Dynamics solutions in Solution Finder; and
* Over 14,000 customers and over 625,000 users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Now, some nitpickers might say that Microsoft Dynamics is not a profit generator for Microsoft, if not even bleeding money due to all the ongoing product investment. Well, guess what, Microsoft is certainly not in dire need of cash to squeeze it out of Dynamics’ operations.

As some of you might know, now that Dynamics is part of MBD, which contains Microsoft Office, Dynamics, Exchange, Office Live and Unified Communications, the parent company doesn’t report the Dynamics business separately any longer in terms of revenue and operating income. However, Microsoft still discloses Dynamics customer billings figures every quarter, and here are the three data points it has publicly disclosed:

1. In fiscal 2006, the last time Dynamics was an external P&L entity, it achieved profitability in Q4, and was profitable for the full year;
2. In fiscal 2007, Dynamics crossed an important internal milestone of becoming an over US$ 1 billion business; and
3. For fiscal 2007 and 2008, Dynamics has reported a 21 percent growth in billings in each of those years.

But the thing that represents Dynamics’ “extra” contribution is the sale of all those Microsoft platform components to all of the customers of Dynamics. That is to say that Dynamics creates a “pull” for other Microsoft technologies.

For IEE IFS uses Microsoft ClickOnce, which is a technology designed to perform web-based deployment of rich applications. Basically the authorized user clicks on a link and the application loads straight from the web server without needing to be installed and distributed via CDs (like traditional client/server applications). It works similar to the counterpart Java Web Start or Adobe Flash technologies.

ClickOnce can be used for all Microsoft .NET UI application styles including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Forms, and Silverlight. Basically, it is the deployment technology for Windows applications. IFS decided not to use WPF as the technology for building UI initially but plans to do so for its next major update due in a couple of years, when it also expects the availability of Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, which the vendor believes will serve its needs well. It is also currently possible to mix WPF and Windows Forms in the same application, since the interoperability apparently works very well.

In any case, the current set of tools used by IFS has helped the ergonomic design and easy navigational technologies, such as: adaptable links panel, contextual breadcrumb navigation, and rich media. Adaptable links panel is a panel at the screen that shows all places “where a user can go from here.” For example, when viewing a customer order the Link panel will show links to customer information, price agreement, service level agreement (SLA) contract, and other “related” information (see figure below).

Addressing the plethora of disconnected applications is the first step a small or mid-sized company can take to gain better control of its business operations and increase the efficiency of those operations. A single integrated suite of software - often referred to as an ERP or enterprise resource planning solution - provides significant advantages to the business, accommodating the breadth of the company's business processes, while providing the flexibility for even small companies to tailor the suites to meet their specific business needs.

Why do I care if my applications are integrated?

Today's technology solutions for the middle market and smaller businesses have distinct advantages over their predecessors - both the large ERP products that were installed in very big company and the standalone applications that were traditionally installed in the SMB. New advances in technology bring mid-sized companies the benefits of a single business management suite without the cost, complexity, and rigidity of traditional software applications.

So let's look at these benefits. What does an integrated suite of business applications allow your business to achieve that a collection of stand-alone applications cannot?

1. Functionality. Access to all the core functionality required to run the business over time - at an affordable price point.
2. Scalability. Integrated suite solutions are designed to grow with your company. Stand-alone applications generally "top out" without transition paths to other solutions, leaving you to start over from scratch with a new and different application. An integrated suite provided as "Software-as-a- Service" (i.e., software hosted online) will allow seamless growth. You can add more users, more modules, increase your database size, and increase your volume of transactions as your business grows without business disruption.
3. Consistent data management. Stand-alone applications - sometimes referred to as "silos" - can't easily talk to one another. Thus, small and middle-market companies spend a great deal of time doing the same task reiteratively - entering the same data in different programs. There are some identifiable problems with this:

It is a waste of time to reenter data over again.

It is very likely to be entered incorrectly.

It may look different in different programs (Why do I have two companies in my vendor list - one is International Business Machines and one is IBM? Why do I have two versions of the same customer - Robert Smith and Bob Smith - with the same address?)

Data that results from very different disconnected applications is inconsistent, so attempts to analyze it yields the proverbial "apples and oranges" - a decision-support fruit salad.

Data isn't readily accessible - data in an integrated system can be accessed without effort spent trying to tie or consolidate the data together.

Lack of visibility into business information that crosses either departments or standalone applications.

Timely access to information. Because a SaaS system is "real-time" you get the information you want at your fingertips immediately.

1. Vendor management. Face it, managing a plethora of vendors with multiple 800 numbers for customer service is not easy. An integrated suite gives you one solution supplier to work with.
2. Reliable service and support. The ability to access affordable service and support is critical. It is easier to support an integrated ERP environment than a hodgepodge of different applications.
3. Clarity. With an integrated business management suite, there is a "single version of the truth" that only needs to be entered once to be propagated to all parts of the business that need it. All business processes, all employees who touch the application, and all the executives who make decisions for the company see the same version of reality, in real time, all the time.
4. Business process customization and automation. Only with an integrated business management suite can SMBs actually tailor the entire business processes that underpin how they conduct their business. Because workflow underlies the entire suite and not just fragmented parts of it, SMBs for the first time have tools to customize the solutions to work exactly how their businesses work - rather than having an application that dictates how the business has to be run.
5. Long term cost of ownership when provided as SaaS. When an integrated suite is offered as Software-as-a-Service - allowing businesses to subscribe to a service rather than purchase, install, and maintain an in-house software solution - companies can better forecast and manage their costs, and eliminate high internal IT support costs. Web-based delivery of business solutions proves the most economical in the long run as your business needs grow and change2. Research shows that SaaS deployments are 50% to 90% faster with a total cost of ownership (TCO) five to ten times less expensive than traditional software.3 Cost of ownership can be complex - as it includes far more than just the savings gleaned in original purchase and implementation. It also includes:

The time, expense and skill required to integrate the multiple applications which has to occur each time an application in the mix is upgraded or replaced

The cost of potential disruption or downtime when the multiple products are upgraded or new revisions or releases are installed

Time and dollars spent upgrading software and ensuring integrated systems work properly together after each upgrade

The very positive effects of increased productivity: faster order processing, rapid access to critical data by employees, increased ability to address customer issues immediately; instant data for upsell/reselling, returns management, as only a few of the many examples.

The even more positive effects of timely, accurate billing with compliance to all revenue recognition requirements