Microsoft’s Mike Morton: “We are committed to continuing ongoing support for Dynamics NAV.”
In 2016, Microsoft announced the launch of the successor to Navision or Dynamics NAV – the company’s traditional, on-premise ERP solution for SMEs. After some teething problems with branding, the company now has a super-powerful cloud-based ERP solution for small and medium-sized businesses: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. An important question for tens of thousands of businesses around the world still using Dynamics NAV is what support they can expect in the near future. To give you some additional insight into this topic, we have summarised a recent interview with Mike Morton, General Manager for Dynamics NAV and D365 Business Central at Microsoft Corp.
Spending budgets on business software is usually a long-term investment. Companies don’t just buy and implement an ERP or CRM solution for a few months. For this very reason, you want to know what future support looks like, how long you can count on this support and what are the best scenarios for a transformation to Dynamics 365 Business Central in the near future.
Here are the key messages from Mike Morton in this interview with QBS Group on 4 March 2021:
– “Microsoft continually publishes an overview of the support and lifecycle policies for all of the company’s products, which includes Dynamics NAV. You can find this information here: Microsoft Lifecycle Policy | Microsoft Docs”
– “Microsoft is committed to continuing support for Dynamics NAV, continuing to release new releases, and including these products in the planning (‘roadmap’) for as long as is currently foreseeable. There is no secret plan to stop releasing new on-premise versions”
– “We want to align our on-premise product Dynamics NAV and our cloud product D365 Business Central as much as possible. But at the same time, there will be innovations that are only available in the cloud. One example is integration with the Teams platform, which is only part of the cloud offering”
– “We expect that the majority of the innovation and new features will be in the cloud product. We would therefore encourage every Dynamics NAV customer to migrate to Business Central. We believe that Business Central offers the best experience for our customers and is the most cost effective scenario in the long run”
So the good news for all Dynamics NAV customers is that support will continue and new versions will also be available. However, the real innovation is expected in Business Central as this product line is Microsoft’s strategic offering for the mid-market. So it makes sense for any Dynamics NAV customer to plan a migration scenario.
If you are using Dynamics NAV today and are not yet ready for a migration to D365 Business Central, one of the best short-term strategies is to upgrade to the latest version of Dynamics NAV to ensure this support for years to come.
