This week we catch up with the team from Catapult, a Microsoft VAR with expertise in Dynamics NAV, CRM, and now Dynamics 365. CEO Elliot Fishman and VP of client development Jeff Bacon have always watched Microsoft's product development and channel closely, and we discuss some of the important changes they have seen this year that they believe will directly impact partners in terms of technology, service offerings, and even personnel.

Some topics of the discussion include:

• New opportunities for adding cloud infrastructure services to Dynamics client engagements;
• Expectations and hopes for what will come next with Dynamics 365 for Financials;
• The choice channel firms face when looking at Microsoft and its enterprise software competitors like Salesforce. 

For all the changes vendors are pushing in the ERP space today, from licensing to deployment to custom development, some patterns from past eras persist for both service providers and customers. This week on the podcast we talk to Peter Joeckel of Turn On Dynamics about the current crossroads that ERP buyers and partners face, looking back at legacy solutions like Dynamics GP and to opportunities of the future with Dynamics 365, other vendors’ solutions, and perhaps offerings that haven’t yet been developed..

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why ERP software selection processes have changed so little in the last twenty years
• The realistic case for GP’s continued longevity
• Why a GP to D365 for Operations migration path still has promise
• How Dynamics partners should select the next opportunity to pursue – with 365 or otherwise

Do you truly need Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities? Does the definition that marketers are feeding you even accurate?

Joining us to make sense of the technology and nomenclature is Nucleus Research analyst Joseph Mathias, author of the provocatively titled report Cutting Through the IoT Hysteria. Mathias and MSDynamicsWorld editor Jason Gumpert explore:

• What true IoT is, and isn’t. (Hint: can the thing receive commands?)
• Why the IoT journey must begin with a problem that may be solved by sensors sensors and/or analytics.
• How the IoT label is misapplied; most user companies need one-way sensor data and analytics.
• Today’s compelling IoT use cases (e.g., in manufacturing, for predictive maintenance).
• The difference between streaming versus batch analytics, and who benefits from each.
• The analytics engines that companies use to make sense of IoT data (e.g., Apache Spark).
• If, and how, Microsoft IoT and Azure Machine Learning fill the bill.