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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central - Day 1.

Hi all,

As most of you know that I am here in Bangkok to attend Directions Asia where it's all happening, so in this article lets talk about Day 1 of Business Central.

1. What's in the name?

As we all know the name of next version  Product is “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central”.

I know there are mixed views about the name like -
 - It's too big.
 - NAV was great.
 - What does business central means?



How I feel about it?
Actually, I was discussing this with my colleague "Jon Long" and he said - Does it matters what Microsoft name the Product or should we focus on What is changing and How we create a Path to reach there for all our customers. 

Believe it or not - It's not yours or my product, so we don't have any control. Lets naming and behavior be with Microsoft and let them call it Business Central or any name they like as its there Child!. Think about it, someone else is reacting to name of your baby boy or girl.

So for me let's focus on change stop discussing about the name.

2. What is “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central” contains?

Microsoft had so many product lines when they plan to move Good Old NAV to Cloud like - Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operation & Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Business Edition and other names which was partial/full NAV with so much confusion.

Guess what "Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central" comes up with Full NAV capabilities and here is what Microsoft say about it.
 - An all-in-one business management solution.
 - An evolution of Dynamics NAV.
 - An application and a platform.
 - An intelligent and unified solution.
 - A member of the Dynamics 365 family.

3. What is the cost/price?

Three Pricing Model - Team Members, Essentials & Premium.


4. When to Expect?

The product will be available starting April 2 for 14 countries (North America & Europe).
Worldwide version, Australia, and New Zealand will be released on July 1, 2018.
For other no News/announcement yet.



5. Will Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on Prem will be released?
Yes, there will be on-prem release for MSDYN365BC.

6. NAV 2018 R2 is Dead?
Here is what "Jon Long" think and from where I took this title from.

Not my title and not be worried about but this is my conclusion from difference in slides for Directions NA and Directions Asia.

If you remember the Roadmap in Directions NA said after NAV 2018 there will be NAV 2018 R2 and then we move to Cloud, guess what that slide changed and now it says -

NAV 2018 (which is available) - NAV 2018 Updates (which means Cumulative updates) and then Dynamics 365 Business Central on cloud and on Prem.



7. C/AL or AL? Will C/AL be available as a Development Language?
I don't know and I didn't got a clear answer about it but here is what i feel.
Eventually C/AL will go away and the future is AL.

8. C/AL should die ?
** My Views nothing official on this point.

As much as i love C/AL like most of you who are reading this I feel Microsoft should discontinue it as soon as possible. I know its very harsh to say when you love something but that statement is coming from past experience.

Remember the bumpy ride, pain and endless discussion 10 year ago when RTC was introduced. Most of us still love classic clients but RTC was future and we were not ready to change.
Guess what we moved ahead from classic and all of us now love RTC. We still remember good old days with classic but those are good memories and will remain with us till we work on this product.

I Feel a product will change as per market need and we also need to start accepting changes. Its hard to change but its mandatory to change if you want to survive.
CHANGE is Permanent!

I hated and i think most of us hated transition from classic to RTC, specially NAV 2009, SP1 and R2 releases because of Mixed mode with Forms & Pages, Classic and RTC Report Layout, Dataports and Xmlports. We are still having those changes with so many customers who are still on classic or mixed mode.

We are at the same transition Phase from C/AL to AL. A mixed mode environment may sound easy today but it will cause pain going forward. I think either we stay on C/AL till it exist or we stay with AL but never be in a mixed mode solutions. It will cause trouble.

9. How easy the transition will be?
** My Views nothing official on this point.

It will be a bumpy ride and lot of pain. Believe it or not its not because of Microsoft, It is a pain that we created for ourselves in past but developing #antipatterns, writing code on base application, commenting standard code segments.

I know what you are thinking - Saurav, you don't understand those were the only options at that time and it is working fine with customer business?

Guess what those all quick fixes that we did and are working fine still today, will cause pain during transition. As i earlier said product was never our child "baby", Product parents decided to change it and we need to change with product.

10. What should we do?

We should start working on cleaning our plates "Customer base code". Upgrade them at least to NAV 2017 and then -

Start using Events, Request Event if you don't find it in product, Community Discussion, Train Team on New Coding methodology, Extension V2.0.

We all need to go together to cross this hurdle and Help each other going forward.

My 2 cents!

If you are in Directions Asia Day 2 and want to discuss more on this i will be around to talk about it!.

Disclaimer - All information above is my own thoughts on what i heard during first of new born child “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central”.

Regards,
Saurav Dhyani
www.sauravdhyani.com

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