Mr.Henning
Vice President and Senior Executive Advisor at Partner Power International.
NAV turned 25 years – Congratulations!
Microsoft Dynamics NAV celebrates
its 25th anniversary. I joined the NAV world just two years after, in 1989. I
urge you to comment on this article if you have additional fun or interesting
facts to share. My main experience comes from servicing international customers
with NAV, but I did have my 2 years at Navision Software and was a part of the
Navision Financials/Windows 95 launch.
Here’s the full story in brief from the very beginning in the early 1980’s.
It began in 1984 with Pc Plus
In 1984 Jesper Balser, Peter Bang
and Torben Wind were still students at Technical University of Denmark (known
as DTU today) when they released PC Plus. PC Plus earned great success because
of its simplicity and ease of use. Rumors say that they also were considering
developing an ironing machine for shirts, but they decided for the IT-way,
which was a clever choice.
Finance, warehouse, debit and credit: Everything a trader needs is in place in
the first version. The program is however only a single-user solution. Despite
its limitations, PC Plus is actually still used today in some small businesses.
Quite amazing for a piece of computer software.
In 1987 NAV is born
In 1987, the three young IT
engineers are ready to conquer the world. Together with IBM, they launch the
first version of NAV (IBM-NAVIGATOR) – later also to be called:
• NAVIGATOR
• NAVISION
• A/Vista
• NAVISION ATTAIN
• NAVISION FINANCIALS
• Microsoft Business Solutions – Navision
• Microsoft Business Solutions – NAV
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV
(If any names are forgotten it’s not intentionally)
Think of it. Nowadays NAV is actually older than many of the people using it.
As the first ERP software in the world to utilize the client-server technology
it was already from the beginning a state-of-the-art piece of software and the
application was built on top of a genius native database. Us old-timers
remember having explained “Optimistic Concurrency” about a million times.
NAV was sold in Denmark through IBM dealers with IBM as the exclusive
distributor. I remember one of the first NAV campaigns run under the theme “The
Beauty of Simplicity” picturing Einstein on public busses and in large newspaper
ads in Copenhagen. The manual (handbook) had a brown leather cover that would
fit into any retro English business club. You got the full software on 4 (later
2) floppy discs, which was quite convenient because to download over a 9.6 baud
modem would’ve been a nightmare.
Several years later, Navision started distribution on its own, taking care of
both development and sales. But NAV had already quickly become one of the
leading financial systems in Denmark, yet competing head on with Concorde
(which later became Microsoft Dynamics AX).
NAV was designed to manage financial, customer/vendor, product overviews and
billing. The system simply made it possible to continuously keep track of
whether your business earned money. Prior to that, businesses had to save and
go through documents and invoices physically, to keep track of projects and
business issues.
1990 The expansion of NAV
1990 was the year where we saw the
release of the earliest iteration of how we know NAV today.
One of the major changes to the software was its ability to allow users to make
major modifications to the software due to the introduction of an application
language, or AL. This opportunity to make changes and new modules inside NAV is
the foundation for the more than 1500 vertical and add/on solutions available
today.
Iterations went from 1.X through 3.X by the late 1990′s. Version 2.X brought
the ability to utilize SQL Servers as the RDBMS. Version 3.X was a critical
release for North America as it initiated the process of combining the Navision
Financial Management, Distribution, and Manufacturing Databases into one single
Database. Other notable advances in Version 3.X were the combination of
Canadian and U.S. databases into one, as well as the addition of unlimited
dimensions building on a truly relational chart of accounts
NAV arrived in North America in 1994 as a DOS-based system called A/Vista.
Coming back to the design of the manuals, the brown leather was now replaced
with artwork by the famous Danish designer Arnoldi: two blue colors
representing the horizon between water and the sky .
NAV was also supported on a number of Unix platforms, IBM’s AIX platform
actually worked really well with NAV. There was also an idea to run NAV on
IBM’s AS/400 in an AIX emulator, but it was never pursued as a go to market
offering.
1995: NAV is given a graphical user interface Windows 95 compliant
In 1995 Navision Software and
Microsoft joined forces around the release of Windows 95 and the first Windows
based version of NAV. The first edition was called Financials – like Oracle’s
competing ERP solution. NAV was the first piece of ERP software that was
certified by Microsoft for Windows 95. Navision Financials 1.0 could also run
under Windows 3.11. There were many jokes and circulating questioning on why
bookkeeping with a graphical user interface and a mouse should be more
effective than using the keyboard and short-keys.
The User Interface Designer and Project Manager Jakob Nielsen was responsible
for making NAV compliant with the Windows 95 GUI standards. Jakob was very
thorough and at the launch of the Windows based NAV version he handed over a
monster thick report to Microsoft detailing where Microsoft did not meet their
own standards. And what is Jakob Nielsen doing today¬? He is Principle User
Experience Manager at Microsoft Cooperation – and by the way he is always
volunteering at Microsoft Convergence and WPC for community work, but that’s
another story.
In parallel with the ongoing updates of the product, resellers started making
their own solutions based on NAV. It was also around this time that the
cooperation with IBM ended and Navision Software established their own
distribution company in Denmark, and distributors were added in several
countries (they were called Navision NTR’s).
In 1999, the newest version of NAV presented the option to use Microsoft SQL
database as an alternative to the Native database. A few years later, this
turned out to be a really good idea!
Throughout the rest of the decade, newer versions of NAV were released,
continuing to improve upon its simplicity and performance.
The product could also handle production management, making it attractive for
larger customers – also outside Denmark. “Dimensions” were introduced to the
product, allowing customers to analyze their business across departments or job
functions. Also the core of the program – the database – was continuously
optimized to run even faster. Partners now started implementing solutions for
up to 100 or more users and in many more geographies, which was added
continuously.
New millennium
The next year, Navision Software
merged with Damgaard, a Danish competing company whose system Axapta was born
and built on SQL database (and Oracle). NavisionDamgaard was merged to bring
together Damgaard’s high-end Axapta capabilities with Navision’s strong
international channel and beauty of simplicity.
The 2001 release of NAV, marketed under the name Attain included a CRM
function, so users could now manage the entire customer side including sales
and service. In addition, the program could also support production management.
With these evolutions, the solution reached out to more and more customers on
the international markets. For the first time, NAV could officially be referred
to as an ERP system.
The international business with NAV was growing fast and Partner Power was
founded in 2001 as the first and is still the only Microsoft Dynamics partner
with a dedicated focus on international Dynamics implementations in more than
50 countries.
Microsoft era
In 2002, Microsoft acquired NavisionDamgaard. In the autumn of the same year
Microsoft Business Solutions – Navision 3.70 was released.
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Business Solutions – Navision 4.0 was then released with a menu
structure looking very much like the Outlook menu.
In 2007, Navision 5.0 is now known as the NAV part of Microsoft’s ERP portfolio
– with a strong Danish participation in the form of XAL, C5 (DK only), NAV and
the former Damgaard Axapta product, under the name AX is aimed towards enterprise
customers.
The other products in the Microsoft Dynamics family are Great Plains (GP) and
Solomon (SL), which are mainly targeting the US and English speaking markets –
and Dynamics CRM.
Development environments are now focused in the direction of Microsoft SQL
database, and each of the products are framed by a Product Roadmap that is
bringing an overall long term MS planning to each of the products.
NAV 2009 – the Role Tailored client
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 release
was promoted big time for the new role based client, where each user desktop is
adapted to the function they have in the company. At the same time, there is
increasingly better integration between NAV and programs in the Office suite.
Partners and users have however been reluctant to take advantage of the Role
Tailored client holding on to the classic client. But those days are over with
the NAV 2013 release where only the RTC user interface is available in the full
client version.
Where the original database was tailored to find data – and therefore lightning
fast – the native database came short in the long run because it was less
suitable for integration with the Microsoft stack.
But NAV has provided 25 years of dedicated service from the good old DOS days
to a fully integrated web application soon to move into the cloud on Azure we
all believe.
The future
Microsoft has geared up to deliver a
major release every year. They are re-activating partners in many of the
countries to deliver localizations under the PLLP framework. And NAV will for
sure soon be available in the cloud.
As an NAV professional that has been on board almost from the start, I can only
say that the many years with NAV has given me a life full of joy and an
opportunity to work with some of the brightest people in IT and Business
Management.
Thank you all NAV old-timers; Users who have NAV as their daily work tool, the
certified professionals that sometimes work really long hours to get the system
ready for the planned go-live, and to Microsoft for continuing to invest in
Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
I am half way through my working life with NAV and I hope that I can retire in
23 years from now and rest assured that NAV is not getting older, only better.
“Like” this article to say “Congratulations NAV”.
None of Navision’s founders are working in Microsoft anymore.
Henning
(Author)
Henning is Vice President and Senior
Executive Advisor at Partner Power International. Having worked with Microsoft
Dynamics since 1989 Henning is a seasoned professional with international
experience from more than 200 Microsoft Dynamics projects completed all over
the world. He is a methodology expert and recognized as one of the leading
innovators by consistently improving how Microsoft Dynamics can be utilized in
international organizations. Henning has an impressive track record from
various management positions within the MS partner organization and is now
working at Partner Power International heading the global customer engagement
organization.
reference link:http://www.partnerpowerinternational.com/blog/nav-turned-25-years-congratulations