Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Top 19 Q&A

Dynamics 365

1. How does Dynamics 365 benefit customers? Dynamics 365 will bring together the best of our CRM and ERP cloud offerings into one cloud service with specific, purpose built, apps for each of your key business processes – like Finance, Sales, Customer Service, etc.

Dynamics 365 provides customers a modern and familiar experience with built in insights, intelligence and workflow. They also use a common data model and consistent application platform to ensure consistency, interoperability and extensibility. Dynamics 365 enables businesses to -

• Start with what they need by offering apps that fit roles, industries, businesses – so our customers can start with what they need and grow at their pace to run their entire business in the cloud. • Enable greater productivity where they need it by connecting structured workflow of business applications and processes with the unstructured work of collaboration and productivity so employees are empowered with productivity tools surfaced in the context of their business processes. • Get built-in Intelligence with business applications that infuses big data, advanced analytics and IoT into processes out-of-the-box to proactively guide employees and customers to optimal outcomes. With Dynamics 365, data and insights are transformed into action for intelligence where it’s needed • Be ready for growth through nimble, adaptable applications, that allow them to compose, modify and extend processes in real-time. Business users are empowered to change and adapt without IT. And organizations can reimagine their business model with a consistent, flexible, extensible platform.

2. Why did you choose the name Dynamics 365 and what does it represent? Dynamics 365 is our next generation of business apps in the cloud. These apps bring together the full power of Microsoft across productivity, advanced analytics, Power BI and IoT, with the strength of Azure and a new application platform and common data model. As such, the new name reflects the significance of the offering and the coming together of the two worlds structured business processes and unstructured personal productivity so our business customers can achieve more.

3. Is this just a marketing/ repackaging exercise or are you offering a new product? Dynamics 365 is a net new proposition that combines new products, new product capabilities, new packaging, new pricing. We are taking a new approach to how we develop our products and bring them to market.

4. Do all these Dynamics 365 apps really work together seamlessly? All of Microsoft’s intelligent business apps will align to our new common data model, and an extensibility model that combines existing customization tools with PowerApps and Flow. At launch we’ll have made solid progress towards apps working seamlessly together, and it’s an effort we’ll continue as we redefine business processes to eliminate historical boundaries between CRM and ERP. CIS, IOT and PowerBI all play key roles in how we help businesses be more outcome driven as well as give our customers and our Partner ecosystem the ability to leverage our new common data platform to integrate legacy and 3rd party solutions with Dynamics 365.

5. What is the "Common Data Model" and what role does it play with Dynamics 365? The common data model is a cloud-resident business database, built on years of experience with our enterprise customers. It will come with hundreds of standard business entities spanning both business process (Dynamics 365) and productivity (Office 365). The standardization and consistency of schema enables partners to build innovative applications and to automate business processes spanning the entire business process spectrum with confidence their solutions can be easily deployed and used across Microsoft’s entire customer base.

6. Are all these business apps built on the Azure platform? We are focused on bringing the vision and value of Dynamics 365 to our customers. While Microsoft Azure is the focal point from which we’ll drive innovation in Dynamics 365 and we’ll continue to adopt Azure capabilities as they are available. We will continue to leverage Office 365 and existing Apps outside of Azure to deliver on the vision.

7. Will Dynamics 365 be available on-premises? No. Dynamics 365 is a cloud service so it will not be available, as is, on premise or in private clouds.

We will continue to innovate in, and support, our great Dynamics CRM, Dynamics AX, NAV, GP and SL solutions. We will also offer customers connectors if they want to use a hybrid of on-premises and cloud solutions and a migration path when they are ready to move to the cloud.

Dynamics 365 Availability & Purchasing

8. When and where will Dynamics 365 be available? The Enterprise edition of Dynamics 365 will be available worldwide in the fall of this year. The Business edition will be made available in the same timeframe in the US and Canada with a phased roll out to additional geographies. We will share specific availability and pricing details closer to the release of these apps.

9. How much will Dynamics 365 cost? The business application industry has traditionally presented customers with a range of siloed applications. When Dynamics 365 launches later this year we want to give customers a new choice. While we’ll support the traditional approach and allow customers to license Dynamics 365 by application (Financials, Operations, Sales, Marketing, etc.) they will also be able to license users by “role.” Our new role based approach will give customers the flexibility they need to support modern, more agile, more diverse employee roles – enabling them to access functionality across all applications within Dynamics 365. We’ll share additional details on pricing closer to availability.

Microsoft Dynamics

10. What happens to the Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, SL and CRM brand/ products? This is the evolution of our business apps. New versions of Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM will come together later this year to create the Enterprise edition of Dynamics 365. The Business edition is based on Project Madeira which is in public preview in North America. In the months following general availability of Dynamics 365, we plan to rapidly expand the number of countries where Dynamics 365 for Financials is available. Dynamics NAV, GP, SL continue to be enhanced, supported and licensed to new customers.

11. Why should customers invest in Dynamics products today vs. waiting for Dynamics 365? The core of Dynamics 365 is built upon the proven business processes offered by our existing Microsoft Dynamics applications. Customers investing in Dynamics solutions today get the best solution to run their businesses today and are able to leverage all the power and capability the Microsoft cloud has to offer. When they are ready to move to Dynamics 365, we will have a clear path for them to get to the new offering.

12. Does xRM provide the consistent app platform and a common data model? The technology referred to as xRM is the current application platform technology that support our customer engagement workloads. With new Microsoft Common Data Model we’ve taken extensive learnings from xRM as well as other application platform technologies from our Dynamics applications such as Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV. Based on these learnings we have developed a new data framework that is natively built on the Azure platform services and provides a rich set of standard business entities for our customers and partners.

13. Is xRM going away? No, the xRM technology is not going away. We will continue invest in this technology to support core extensibility scenarios required for our customer engagement solution.

14. What does Dynamics 365 offer for Small and Midsize Businesses? At launch, Dynamics 365 will include Dynamics 365 Financials for Business, a comprehensive accounting and business management solution for SMBs. That offering is currently in preview in the US and Canada today as Microsoft Project “Madeira.” In the months following general availability of Dynamics 365, we plan to rapidly expand the number of countries where Dynamics 365 for Financials is available.

Microsoft AppSource

15. Why is Microsoft introducing AppSource? Don’t you already have the Azure Marketplace and other destinations for apps? How is this different – and is another marketplace really needed?

SaaS apps help organizations improve agility across business process categories. However, for business users, sourcing apps tailored to them, their business and their industry can be challenging. Microsoft AppSource helps business users discover and try apps, add-ins and content packages from Microsoft-certified partners, including those built on top of Microsoft Dynamics, Office, Cortana Intelligence and Azure.

The Azure Marketplace is Microsoft’s destination for IT professionals and developers to discover, trial, and acquire IaaS implementations, APIs, data, and developer services.

High-level Microsoft marketplace positioning: AppSource...................Line of business SaaS apps Office Store..................Extensions to Office Azure Marketplace.......Services for building apps on Azure IT solutions templates for Azure Windows Store.............Windows 10 apps and games

16. Does Microsoft AppSource support commerce? At preview we have discover and try capabilities in Microsoft AppSource. We are investigating commerce and have no additional details to disclose at this time. For preview, partners can monetize their apps using their existing sales motions.

17. What are the benefits for customers and for ISVs listing on Microsoft AppSource? For customers, AppSource is your destination to easily find and evaluate the apps from Microsoft and our partners that drive your business. For ISVs, Microsoft AppSource is your destination to market line-of-business (LoB) SaaS apps to business users. Drive discoverability and usage of your apps within an existing global network of business customers through co-marketing opportunities, lead generation and the support of Microsoft’s worldwide ecosystem and salesforce. Harness Azure’s leading, secure and intelligent cloud services platform and tools to deliver differentiated apps to customers.

18. Isn’t Microsoft AppSource just like AppExchange from Salesforce? Microsoft AppSource offers much more to our customers and developers. Microsoft is the only company that can deliver both the depth of first party business solutions and fully integrated analytics, productivity and IoT solutions at cloud scale. Central to this approach is how we are building our own first party business applications, as well as how we are helping our ecosystem of partners to delivers solution to business users through Microsoft AppSource.

19. How do I get started and list my app on Microsoft AppSource? There a 4 basic steps to listing your LoB app on Microsoft AppSource • Evaluate the criteria to see if your app is a good fit • Submit your app info for consideration to be published • Upload your app to Microsoft AppSource staging and test • Publish your app to Microsoft AppSource Simply go the AppSource partner page here http://appsource.microsoft.com/ then scroll to the bottom where you can open up the web form to fill out information about your app and submit to the AppSource team.