IDT's March Edition of Integration Insider

Steve Ballmer speaks up about Cloud Computing, special promotions for new Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 customers, get a demo of GP 2010, Microsoft CRM and Outlook Integration, should you hire or outsource? All this and more in the March edition of IDT's Integration Insider. View it online

JTC Education, Inc. chooses IDT Consulting for Dynamics GP financial series, installation and implementation.

IDT Consulting completes phase one Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation for JTC Education,Inc. located in Atlanta, GA. www.javelintraining.com

Top 10 Reasons to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 offers a bunch of new features and functionality:

• 64 BIT OS support (english translation..means its faster);
• Report formats built on SQL Server and SQL Reporting Services (SRS);
• Integration with workflows based on SharePoint;
• Integration with Office Communicator (now that is really cool);
• Web Services Integration capabilities (allows you to extend the Dynamics services to other applications);
• Report Builder to quickly create an analysis of your financial data
  

Get the complete list and further description by clicking here!

Trade in your Netsuite for Microsoft Dynamics GP

March 8, 2010 – June 25, 2010

Microsoft is excited to announce a Microsoft Dynamics ERP promotion for businesses currently using NetSuite business applications that wish to take advantage of the rich functionality offered by Microsoft Dynamics® GP.

The promotion is comprised of an escalating trade-in discount based on Microsoft Dynamics product edition and number of users purchased and can earn up to a $850 trade in discount for every NetSuite user that switches to Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Contact me at brian.anderson@idconsulting.com to get the details or visit http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/rightstep/offer.aspx.

Four reasons to choose Microsoft Dynamics GP for your next Financial System!

Four Fantastic Benefits of managing your finances with Microsoft Dynamics GP:

• Provides comprehensive, flexible financial management functionality to meet your unique business needs

• Reduces costs and streamlines operations with automated functionality

• Helps improve control and security over your financial management

• Connects people and processes, to increase efficiency and extend insight

In a nutshell, Dynamics GP is flexible, scalable, affordable, and allows you to integrate with many different kinds of operational systems.

Find out more about the benefits of Dynamics GP by clicking here !

Microsoft Dynamics GP for Manufacturing

Three top reasons manufacturers choose Microsoft Dynamics GP:

• Meets unique manufacturing requirements without added complexity. It easily adapts to your unique business needs, with quick deployment and minimal training time.
• Reduces costs and streamlines operations. It enables you to communicate, share, and find information across your organization, between departments and multiple facilities.
• Delivers better customer service. It helps you provide more accurate quotes to your customers and streamline across your manufacturing process.

Check out the Microsoft Dynamic GP for Manufacturing fact sheet by clicking here.

Top New Features in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

Click here to get the top new features in Dynamics GP 2010!

Statement of Direction from Microsoft about Dynamics GP

One of the most common questions we receive from partners involves the direction of Microsoft Dynamics GP and how they can best communicate the strategy and roadmap to prospects and existing customers. The Microsoft Dynamics GP Statement of Direction has been revamped and updated with the most current plans for the product. The statement includes information about both Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 Feature Pack and Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.


As part of the Business Ready Customer Care initiative announced October 2007, Microsoft is providing ongoing roadmap visibility through comprehensive statements of direction (SODs) that provide our customers with insight into the planned product innovations at least 12-18 months in advance of the next version release. Learning about future technology innovations in advance, will help you more efficiently manage your infrastructure and undertake product and IT planning with greater foresight.

This document outlines the future direction of Microsoft Dynamics™ GP through the year 2016. By leveraging the planned innovations in Microsoft Dynamics GP, organizations can connect your business vision with your software, connect your people with your processes, and connect your company with your community. This is the value we are committed to delivering to our customers, and this is the vision that guides our investments in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Click here to get the complete statement of direction from Microsoft.

GP Version 2010, the reiteration of GP 11 coming soon

Please note that GP 2010, formerly named GP version 11, is expected to be released by Microsoft 2nd quarter this year. There are some really exciting enhancements to GP in this new version, including rewritten report writing tools and KPIs. Please contact me for further details, Brian Anderson 630.875.1100 x323.

Three Dynamics Users for a Buck promotion!

Microsoft is excited to announce “Three Users for a Buck” - a Microsoft Dynamics (U.S.) promotion targeting growing and medium-sized businesses that wish to take advantage of the rich functionality, low cost of ownership, and rapid deploy-ability offered by Microsoft Dynamics GP.

The promotion allows customers to purchase up to 3 Advanced Management (AM) or Business Essential (BE) user licenses for $1 (US). This offer applies to new customers making their first purchase of Microsoft Dynamics GP and is effective Monday, March 8, 2010 through the end of business Friday, July 1, 2010.

Complete details at http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp2010-uslaunch/

Contact me, Brian Anderson for more details at: brian.anderson@idtconsulting.com or 630/875-1100 x323!

Microsoft Dynamics GP 50 Tips in 50 Minutes

Here is a handy primer to keep at your fingertips when working with Dynamics GP, especially for newbies! Visit IDT for: 50 tips in 50 minutes.

NEW! Microsoft Financing Options expanded to support the channel's end user customers!

Microsoft Financing is currently operating under an interim program with DLL (De Lage Landen). Deployment of the new Microsoft Financing program with a permanent bank will be coming soon, so expect further announcements. However, recent improvements have made it easier to leverage Microsoft Financing:

• 10% minimum MS content requirement on all transactions – no longer a minimum 35% MS content requirement!
• Competitive rates – currently 8.8% on $100k @ 3 years, 10.3% on $50k @ 3 years and 11.3% on $25k @ 3 years (valid until March 31, 2010)
• MS Dynamics Enhancement can be financed alone on a 1-year or 3-year loan term
• Total Solution Financing – Microsoft software, hardware, partner services, 3^rd party software and sales tax bundled into one convenient monthly payment

Given any further thought to your continuity planning in light of all the natural disasters?

White Paper: Business Continuity Planning 101 - Is your data safe? In the wake left behind by Gustav, Hanna, Ike and other recent natural disasters, Business Continuity Planning for Small & Medium Size Businesses is essential! It is crucial to understand the risks associated with not having a BCP in place and, find out how to remove the cost and complexity burdens from your staff.

AP Metrics You Can't Afford to Miss! Imaging and Workflow vs. Paper

You will learn how to improve your AP operations, realize a rapid ROI on your investment, while streamlining processes.

If you are looking internally to identify ways in which you can squeeze cash from operations - or at least get a better handle on its flow, potentially save thousands per year by implementing imaging and workflow in your AP department, then please review this four part educational video:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Happy Viewing and post your feedback!

Microsoft Dynamics GP can process up to 3.28 MILLION business transactions and 10.66 MILLION business transaction line items over an 8 hour day!

Testing the scalability of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0… From: Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP

With every release, and sometimes multiple times within a release, the Microsoft test team takes a crack at proving out just how scalable Microsoft Dynamics GP really is when put under some demanding scenarios…demanding, as in 1,000 concurrent users demanding! They recently completed another round of this testing on Dynamics GP 10.0 SP2 release, along with both Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. The results are impressive to say the least! A whopping 3.28 MILLION business transactions and 10.66 MILLION business transaction line items were processed over the period of an 8 hour day!

The first thing you have to realize is that Microsoft runs this test multiple times to validate the results, and we disperse the 1,000 concurrent users throughout the system to mimic a real-world type of scenario. Here is the breakout of how the users, transactions, and processes are split out:

Transaction Type	Transaction Line Count	Number of Clients/Users
General Ledger Transaction Entry	10	115
Payables Voucher Entry	1	100
Receivables Cash Entry	1	105
Purchase Order Entry	5	50
Purchase Order Received	5	25
Purchase Order Posted	5	25
Sales Order Entry	5	400
Sales Order Transfer	5	75
Sales Order Posting	5	75
Receivables Cash Posting	N/A	20
Payables Voucher Posting	N/A	5
Payables Historical Aged Trial Balance	N/A	1
Receivables Historical Aged Trial Balance	N/A	1
Payables Check Processing	N/A	1
Receivables Month End	N/A	1
US Payroll Check Processing	N/A	1
Total Constant Concurrent Users		1,000

Now, with that level of activity going on in the system, here is the throughput of each area when tested over the period of a typical 8 hour workday:

Transaction Type	Transactions per hour	Transaction lines per hour
General Ledger Transaction Entry	13,978	139,780
Payables Voucher Entry	35,589	35,589
Payables Voucher Posting	74,697	74,697
Receivables Cash Entry	68,617	68,617
Receivables Cash Posting	27,389	27,389
Purchase Order Entry	4,473	23,715
Purchase Order Received	6,170	30,850
Purchase Order Posted	24,565	122,825
Sales Order Entry	49,459	247,295
Sales Order Transfer	49,441	247,205
Sales Order Posting	51,049	255,245
US Payroll Check Processing	5,000	60,000

Microsoft Dynamics GP can process up to 3.28 MILLION business transactions and 10.66 MILLION business transaction line items over an 8 hour day!

This is an improvement over the previous test which leveraged GP 10.0 RTM with SQL Server 2005 and Windows Server 2003 (the test that delivered 2.6M transactions with 8.3M transaction lines). This new test actually used the SAME hardware as the previous 1,000 concurrent user test, with the same test methodology and data. This means that in an apples-to-apples comparison, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 showed a whopping 26% improvement in transaction throughput (+28% in transaction line throughput)! That is some serious performance!

GP 11.0 Shows Easier Data Access and More Customization

GP 11.0 Shows Easier Data Access and More Customization

Drilling down into data and customizing metrics will be key new features in Microsoft Dynamics GP 11.0, slated for release by the middle of next year, according to Brian Meier, Microsoft program manager.

"I'm going to show you Word documents," he said to a crowd during the GPUG Summit on Friday in St. Charles, Ill. "Dashboards and metrics in version 11 will be the same thing. We want to focus on simplifying your data."

One way to simplify will be the ability to investigate into data easily, Meier said.

"If you have an issue, you will be able to drill back into that issue," he said. "Instead of sorting through a spreadsheet, it is easier to see a high level and then be able to drill down into the areas that interest you."

Customization was also a prominent topic of the session.

"The Dynamics GP role center, in version 10, was based around Office web components with no option to customize metrics," Meier said. "That was a big issue. We've made an additional option to use reporting services metrics. That will give you the option to create new ones if you choose to.

"You will be able to build it once and share it across multiple applications," he added. "We've also added the ability to see those metrics in your Dynamics GP list. Starting at a high level where you can see something is wrong; there will be drill back functionality so you can see more detail. And you can open the window and get into the client application window and drill from there."

Meier focused on the changes version 11.0 would offer customers in regard to Word templates. He said there will be integration with Microsoft Office Word and that GP 11.0 will offer 22 templates "out of the box." Users will also have the ability to create and modify work in Word and that the new version will support a multitude of templates for each Report Writer report.

"Templates simplify reporting," he said. "You can customize a template for a customer or vendor. The default templates can also be modified and you can create a new template from a blank document."

Dynamics GP in the Cloud

Dynamics GP in the cloud

Microsoft Corp. has launched a collection of online services for Microsoft Dynamics ERP customers who want to move certain applications like expense report processing into the cloud while keeping their ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems on-premise.

Microsoft said it can best serve its customers by offering a flexible deployment model so they can implement their ERP systems in the environments that are best for them. Microsoft said currently over 150 partners worldwide offer customers this hybrid option.

The online services that can be attached to its Microsoft Dynamics ERP platform including a new Azure-based service called Sites, new Commerce Services, and an expansion of its Payment Service, according to the company.

"The significance of this announcement is about Microsoft Dynamics taking another step into the world of cloud computing, and being one of the early vendors to talk about a hybrid environment of on-premise and cloud and how those scenarios might work and providing the technical support to allow them to work," said Jim Shepherd, an analyst with Boston-based AMR Research Inc. "And there hasn't been a real connection yet between Azure as a public cloud service from Microsoft and the Dynamics product line. So this is the first time we're really seeing the Dynamics business leverage the Azure offering."

The Sites Service lets users create and manage websites within the ERP applications. For example, using Sites a user can easily create such things as landing pages for marketing campaigns, dedicated request for quotes sites to get quotes from business partners, sites for product registration and customer feedback from customers, as well as human resourses sites for job recruiting, the company said.

Commerce Service extends multi-channel commerce situations by providing a link between the ERP products and different e-commerce scenarios such as business-to-consumer e-commerce marketplaces, dedicated e-commerce storefronts or built-in shopping cart functions, the company said. That means customers can list products and accept orders from a number of places from a single interface, Microsoft said.

Payment Service lets customers process payment transactions from the Microsoft Dynamics ERP interface across multiple channels, including e-commerce, point of sale and call center transactions. This feature currently works with payment processing services including First Data Merchant Services Corporation, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and PayPal.

"The biggest reason why this is important for our customers is typically it takes a lot of time to integrate down into financial systems so putting in ecommerce you have to have this fluid nature between items flowing into the ecommerce system as well as transactions flowing back through into the financial systems," said Michael Bolton, Director of Product Development, for Microsoft partner, Keyora Inc., in Oakville, Ontario. "With that Dynamics Online has really stepped up the game in speed to market and being very quickly able to launch an ecommerce site that extends the financial system."

Bolton said with the cloud services he can hook up to the Dynamics Online cloud and set up a brand new site from beginning to end that is fully integrated into the ERP solutions in just four hours-something that in the past could take up to a month to accomplish from an integration perspective.

Bolton said the other major benefit has to do with payment processing.

"With payment processing customers have to fall under PCI-level (payment card industry) standards to ensure the credit card data is safe and secure. One way to do that is you never have the credit card information pass through the system of the client," he said. "So what Dynamics Online has been able to offer is the ability for all those credit card transactions to happen inside the cloud."

That means that every single client that rolls out payment processing through Dynamics Online does not have to go through a PCI audit because the transaction data is never put through their systems, which could be a huge time saver and a huge cost saver to clients, he said.

Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Boston-based Nucleus Research, said the new online services were an important and incremental step for Microsoft in showing customers that it has a cloud offering.

"It's a first step," she said. "What we do see is an awful lot of Microsoft customers being very happy with the value they get from their existing ERP [systems]. These solutions give them an opportunity to extend that value. But I think it's just the beginning of what we'll see from Microsoft in terms giving customers options for whether they want to be managed on-premise or in the cloud."

The new Microsoft Dynamics ERP Sites and Commerce Services are expected to be available in the first half of 2010, with the additional payment service providers available in the first quarter of 2010.

---Reprinted from MSDynamicsWorld