Somehow I seemed to have missed this last week. Microsoft has decided to slow down development of its next generation ERP offerings, code-named Project Green. This is according to Doug Burgum, SVP of Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), in his testimony last week in the Oracle anti-trust lawsuit. The number of developers assigned to Project Green will be reduced from the current 200 to about 70, with the first release scheduled now for 2008.
I have a feeling this delay has more to do with the delay of Microsoft's next generation operating system, code-named Longhorn, than with anything else. If Project Green is designed to leverage Longhorn, and Longhorn's schedule is slipping, then it makes sense to slow down Project Green.
The silver lining to existing users of MBS existing products--Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, and Solomon--is that Microsoft appears to be redeploying many of those Project Green developers to work on enhancements to the current products. Existing customers and new prospects are likely to get improved functionality quicker under the new arrangement. It also removes
the concern that I voiced previously that the existing products might become quickly obsolete if Microsoft was seeking to replace them quickly with Project Green.
Network World Fusion has more details on this subject.
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Is Microsoft upstaging Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, and Axapta with "Project Green"?
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