Join us for a quick recap of top headlines from the first month of 2021 in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform channel.
Show Notes:
As the pandemic drags on, the Microsoft business applications community is finding a new and evolving ways to connect. The DynamicsCon virtual event began in 2020 and will run for the second time in March. To learn more about how it began and what is going into the next event, we talked to the founder, Jon Stypula. MSDW is a media sponsor of the event and we wanted to discuss both the event has developed and where Jon hopes it will go in the future.
Show Notes:
In this special edition of the MSDW Podcast we are featuring a recent conversation between Microsoft MVP Rick McCutcheon and Microsoft global strategic ISV alliance manager John O'Donnell on how partners are utilizing Microsoft AppSource. Rick originally published this conversation as part of his Partner Talks series.
Microsoft launched its AppSource ISV solution directory in 2016 as a replacement for a collection of old and fragmented systems. The initial coverage compared it to Salesforce AppExchange and Microsoft promised it would lead to higher ISV solution quality and that it would evolve quickly with.
Nearly five years later, AppSource has evolved and grown, though probably not as quickly as Microsoft has wanted. Still, most ISVs in the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform space list their solutions there, and some partners even list services offerings. Some vendors report closing sales thanks to the platform, others don't.
In this conversation, O'Donnell emphasizes several strengths of the platform, from its global reach to its expanding set of offerings, beyond Dynamics 365 and Azure into other areas of Microsoft's business. They also discuss some ways vendors can optimize their listings to get the most out of the platform today.
The Microsoft's Dynamics 365 FastTrack team has been holding a TechTalk webcast series in recent months featuring the use of various tools and capabilities of the Power Platform in the context of strengthening a Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (a.k.a., Finance and Operations) system.
Series organizer and FastTrack architect Rachel Profitt explains that, while there is lots of great material on Power Platform and likewise plenty of information available on D365 F&O, customers and partners can still find it hard to connect the dots that open up the full range of solution possibilities.
Profitt and principal technical specialist Murray Fife of Microsoft's Black Belt team recently co-presented a new session in the event series on AI Builder, and they discuss with us some of the highlights of that session, the audience reaction, future plans for the webcast series, and the broader outlook for building momentum in blending Power Platform tools with ERP.
Show Notes
On this episode we welcome back Peter Joeckel of TurnOnDynamics and Karen Riordan of Menlo Technologies for a discussion of the new year's Dynamics GP outlook for customers and partners.
Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft's SMB ERP product of the future, so changes still to come are to some extent predictable already starting to play out: incentives for legacy ERP customers to plan for a transition to BC; greater urgency on partners to transact via Microsoft's CSP program, and a GP product roadmap that has shriveled to almost nothing.
But given these realities, what is to be done? The economics of ERP are changing along with the rest of IT and enterprise software. We discuss the impact of some of Microsoft's latest moves like new cloud assessments for on-prem customers (not necessarily through their partner of record) and the latest channel sales incentives. These changes, will impact customers not just in terms of whom they consult with, but what types of partners can really serve their needs in the future.
Show Notes:
This episode is sponsered by HCL-PowerObjects.
As the Microsoft Power Platform has enjoyed greater adoption, the challenges of managing security, governance, data migration, licensing and other needs have gained greater urgency for customers.
John Doris and Jamie Barker of HCL-PowerObjects join us to discuss their experiences working with a wide variety of organizations that have been investing in the Power Platform to modernize their systems and processes. We dive into the most common challenges as well as other considerations that both partners and customers are dealing with like the future of front office and back office applications, the impact of Microsoft Teams, and Jamie and John's experiences helping organizations build a Center of Excellence.
Other resources:
Show Notes: