Directions US and its Announcements

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I have been staring about 10 minutes to this empty sheet of OneNote (you know that OneNote is going to be integrated with NAV "7"? - THAT's a nice feature, believe me.. :-)) before I knew I wanted to tell - or let's say - before I knew what I was going to tell. Because there is much to tell .. but not too much I can share.

I know .. It's getting complicated. Bottom line: At Directions US we had to sign NDA's, which means that all info was confidential. And I can understand, really. when developing a product, you're building to something, but can't be really sure what will be released, how it will look like, you don't want your competitors to know too much .. until it's actually finished. As a company, you want to have the flexibility to change the goals, to change the roadmap, as long as it's for the best.

BUT

Only 12 hours after the keynote at Directions I read this:

https://community.dynamics.com/b/the...n-orlando.aspx

OK, now it's really getting complicated. In my opinion, Microsoft shares the most sensitive information themselves:

• The release date of NAV "7", being September/October 2012;
• The fact that it will be all in the cloud:
  • On Azure
  • And with a Web Client, which is not the Sharepoint Client, but a brand new full blown web client (which by the way will be developed in SilverLight). Quote: "users (whether they are running NAV on premise or in the cloud) will be able to access the product with nothing more than Internet Explorer 9 on their desktop".

Just to respect the NDA, I'm not sharing anything else .. but still .. it doesn't get more exciting than this, dudes (keep in mind there is already a Statement of Directions about NAV "7", so you already know quite a bit ..).

Anyway, it's now all over the place .. Even Azure-bloggers are posting about it (where I had to defend NAV for crying out loud..:-/).

How was Directions?

Marvelous!! I want you to remember that this convention is really worth going to: lots of different tracks, lots of people who earn their food on the plate with NAV. You can feel taht. I will definitely go next year!

BUT (it seems the become a BUT-post..)

I (and this might be only my opinion) don't want to see this convention evolve into a Microsoft-convention. We've got those conventions, and they're good as well. What I expect on a partnerconference, is the "experience" of partners! I don't only want to see how it works, I want to see what partners do with it .. or can do with it. I want to gain ideas.

In my opinion (did I already mention that this was all just my opinion?), Microsoft should talk about the future, and partners should talk about the present: experiences, ideas, do's and dont's, tips and tricks, .. .

Also: what's up with the C-Siders, guys! I love that band! .

My Web Services Session

Well .. There isn't too much to say about my session. It was again about Web Services. And I tried to put my experiences into it: what have we done with web services the past year - and that's what I've shown. The main demo's were:

• Cannibalism: let NAV consume its own webservice to get seemless integration with all companies in one or more DB's.
• An integration with Magento on Linux
• An integration of iFacto ReVision with a NAV 2009 R2-based Task Management

I just hope that the people who attended were satisfied :-). In my defense .. I was still suffering from major stomach-issues during that session (won't go further into that though ;&deg ).

Our PRS Session

If you don't know .. PRS stands for "Partner Ready Software": an initiative I talked about on the Dynamics Gues Column. We had our session there, and after that, a Chalk and Talk. Not too many people attended the C&T .. BUT (yes, one more..) .. It lasted for 2 hours. We got many feedback, good feedback, .. and it really motivates us to go and work further on it :-). Much more to come in the near future!

This was it for now .. stay tuned!







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