The below quote is from Errol Schoenfish, the director of product management for Dynamics GP and gives an indication of the path Microsoft are intending to take.
A large portion of that release will be dedicated to getting us to the cloud. It’s pretty astounding what our development team has been able to do. This was a massive task and ISVs are over the moon about it.”
Following on from this post about the Named System Database Architecture I’ve been doing some further reading about some of the upcoming features in Microsoft Dynamics GP “12”. One of the key features to have been announced is the Silverlight based Web Client; the below screenshots from David Musgrave’s Developing for Dynamics GP blog show two of the commonly used screens in Microsoft Dynamics GP presented in the web client.
The first is Vendor Maintenance which shows both the Ribbon and a row of tabs along the top which give access to the sub screens usually accessible via buttons along the bottom right of the standard client form;
The second form is the PO Entry form which, like the above Vendor Maintenance form, has been transformed using a template which provides the ability to change the layout of the form without making functionality changes;
While templates can be made for forms it isn’t strictly necessary as the standard template will allow any Dexterity form to be rendered; which means that any ISV who has done Dexterity modifications won’t need to make any special changes for their forms to be displayed correctly in the Web Client.
The Web Client is intended to complement, rather than replace, the traditional Desktop client. Indeed it is aimed at customers who have their Dynamics GP solution hosted by a partner and are currently accessing it via Citrix or Terminal Services. There has so far been no intimation that Microsoft intend to supply hosting of Dynamics GP themselves as the only comment they have made with regards to hosting was that “GP 12 will be deployed in public cloud scenarios by partners”.
Microsoft intend to do certified technical previews by the end of the 2011 calendar year and has plans for a beta of GP ’12’ possibly in the spring of 2012 so the wait to see the new functionality won’t be too long.
What should we write about next?
If there is a topic which fits the typical ones of this site, which you would like to see me write about, please use the form, below, to submit your idea.