Demystifying Business Ready Licensing

I've got a new column up at MSDynamicsWorld.com looking to demystify GP's Business Ready Licensings. Make sure you take a look.

GP 10 Road Show Results

The Dynamics Existing Customer Road Show was pretty good yesterday. Many of the items and themes I was aware of from Convergence but it was a nice refresher now that 10.0 is actually here. My best guess was that there was around a 130 people there. The breakdown (by my estimate) was 3% NAV, 10% SL and 87% GP. God there were a lot of us GP people which was great. They had so many GP folks that they ran out of packets to give us. There were no AX folks since AX wasn't featured in the road show.
The acronym parade continued with Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS), SQL Reporting Services (SRS) and Business Ready Licensing (BRL) getting the most play.
I ran into an number of people I know, some of whom have been featured on this site. It was nice to see Steve Gray of 4penny.net, David, Lars and Joe of SSYH, Sarah of IBG and Angie from epartners. Hmmm.... An ISV and 3 partners. I've got to get a life.
I worked on getting Steve Gray to come talk GP development on the podcast along with Bob Buresh of MS to give us the low down on Business Ready Licensing and hopefully Travis Wandell of MS talking about how to finance your Dynamics GP solution.
So what did I take away from the road show?

• GP 10 easily looks like the best release of GP yet. There's a much stronger emphasis on the user experience. This includes one or two button access instead of long menus, AR & AP balancing (inventory may be coming) and lots of little things like that.
  
• MOSS, MOSS, MOSS. Customers are still pretty skeptical and MS is still pushing this really hard. Get your spoon full of sugar and start figuring out how to get the MOSS medicine down.
  
• Business ready licensing is still really confusing for folks. The bottom line, it may or may not be right for you now. You're best option is  to get with your partner or MS and talk about the direction of your solution.  All the partners I've talked to aren't pushing it unless it makes sense for the client. In some cases it's the only smart choice, for others, not so much.
  
• The reporting model is still tough for people. There's just too many choices with Report Writer, Crystal, SRS, FRx, Smartlists & Smartlist builder and Excel reports with Excel Server. Many of them work through MOSS, a few don't. What scenarios create "live" reports vs. static reports? What do I when want static but get live and vice versa? The GP folks just aren't willing to kill a reporting solution so we've got a buffet.
  
• The Payroll/HR sections got the highest number of improvements in GP10. If you run Payroll or HR, that alone should make you interested in the upgrade.
  
• I realized how much I hate the stupid Fisher-Price diagrams. You know the primary color, text laden wheels, pyramids and charts that Microsoft and so many others like to do. I kept looking for a string to pull so the wheel would spin around and make "Moo" noises. Someone please use a Tablet PC and hand draw it in crayon for me.  That would be better.
  
• If you have a question about GP 10, go to the road show. There are LOTS of people there who can answer it.

Random Takeaways

• Some people still don't know what Convergence is. People who've been running GP for some time. Please email me with the address of the rock you live under and I'll make sure you get some information.
  
• The Dynamics group still doesn't have customer to customer support figured out yet. This gets a separate post.
  
• Some people like living in Fargo.
  
• It was weird walking out by the pool on a break to see 3 or 4 people in swimsuits lounging by the pool and 30 people in business casual on cell phones or smoking.
  

Dynamics GP: Business Ready Licensing

I spent some time with our MS rep today and I got the lowdown on Business Ready Licensing.
I'd heard the term but when MS makes licensing changes I tend to run and hide.I still don't know whether it works for me but at least I understand it now so I thought I would try to translate it into layman's terms.
In a nutshell, it's the value meal approach to licensing. They'll probably hate that which is why they don't say it that way, but I can.
First there's Business Essentials (the medium happy meal) which is the core that most businesses use, all for one, per user, price. (GL, Bank, FA, AR, AP, Multi Currency, POP, SOP, FRx, Inventory, Safe Pay, Interco, Customization site licenses and IM for conversions)
The pricing is tiered and declines with more users but you get the idea.
If that's not enough, you can get the Advanced Management option (the large happy meal). This includes more things than I can list here.
Finally if that doesn't fill you up, there's Advanced Management Enterprise (Super Size me baby). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this includes all the modules that you want a really specialized consultant for when you implement them.
Don't forget to leave room for desert, there are a few a la carte modules (Payroll, HR, Smartlists builder, etc.) that can be added to any value meal, er ERP solution. Apple pie anyone?
All new customers are getting business ready licenses now, legacy customers like me get a choice to stick with our per module licensing or move to business ready.
The ex-consultant in me likes having modules that might improve my productivity but that we might not have the obvious ROI to buy standalone. Also, as business needs change, you could implement modules you're already licensed for, without additional product cost. Of course, your enhancement plan is based on the whole solution, not just modules you use!
The CFO in me doesn't want my consultant personality spending all his time implementing modules that may or may not help us.
I do wonder what effect this will have on ISV's. If you already have access to Forecaster, will you look at other budgeting solutions? If you have GP intercompany, will you be able to sell the CFO on paying more for the advanced functionality of MC2's Advanced Intercompany product? (Hat tip to Bill Marshall for a fine product.)
If I were a reseller, I'd be thrilled. They make their money on implementations not software sales. I predict that "Well, you already have the software license, why not let us implement feature XYZ?" will be the new hot sales line for some time to come.
Am I business ready? Who knows. I have to go home and run the ROI numbers to find out.