Microsoft has been tooting its horn lately about the latest new features coming out in it's next Dynamics GP release. Dynamics GP is a set of tools to help businesses with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). ERP is about helping businesses plan out their requirements for money, material, and people. CRM is pretty much what it says, tools to help businesses manage their relationships with customers. So what does any of this have to do with BI?
One of the problems that some of the old line vendors in these businesses, companies like SAP, JD Edwards (now part of Oracle), and PeopleSoft, have faced is that customers quickly exhausted the basic reporting capabilities that came with these packages and ended up going out to look for BI tools to complement them. Different vendors have responded in different ways. For example, SAP bought Business Objects, which is one of the top BI software companies. They're trying to push Business Objects as an integrated (BI) solution to go with their ERP.
Microsoft, in classic style, is trying to head off the customer before he or she starts for the door. One of the big things they're touting in the coming release of Dynamics GP is the amount of business intelligence they're packing in to the product. This is basically the same thing they did with the desktop. Add functionality and call it part of the "operating system." By the time governments in and outside the US caught on to the scheme, it was a moot point. Microsoft had established dominance in the PC operating system market that has persisted to the present day. It'll be interesting to see how this ERP/CRM/BI mash-up plays out. Will Microsoft be able to provide sufficient BI capability in the Dynamics GP package to keep customers from looking elsewhere?
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