Legacy Modernization
Handling the challenges of upgrading from Dynamics NAV to D365 Business Central 
Shruthi Podduturi 26 Nov, 2019
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A step closer to our vision
“We believe every software product will be part of a platform ecosystem, and software expertise will become key to success in the digital world.”
This is coMakeIT’s vision statement in which many years ago, we predicted the shift from products to platforms in the software ecosystem.. The trend, further accelerated by the pandemic is also evident in the recent shifting of some older Microsoft products to their Digital Operating Platform, D365 Business Central. This blog is about how ISVs now have greater freedom and play an important role in transforming the digital ecosystem with their products.
The Shift to D365 Business Central
At coMakeIT, we have been customizing various Microsoft products like Dynamics NAV, CRM, AX, etc for our clients in diverse industry verticals. We are sure, shifting them to the business management platform, D365 Business Central, is a good move and modernizes many businesses.
The shift helps businesses to grow more Agile and use a single solution to streamline their operations. Also, the new platform connects many individual solutions and provides a better analysis of collected data. This helps businesses make the right decisions faster. However, many businesses across the globe must give up existing legacy ERP [DK1] solutions even if they’re working fine.
The Shift may be intimidating, but..
Shifting from a legacy system to a new one or modernizing a part of it is intimidating even for highly successful businesses. In the case of Microsoft product users, it is not just the change in Microsoft offerings, but also the direction the ecosystem is evolving that is compelling them to modernize. Even though it is not an easy move, it is a good opportunity for businesses to modernize holistically.
While moving to the newer platforms, they also up-to-date their operations, move to the cloud, and better their service offerings to their customers. They can take advantage of the cloud functionality and enable their employees across various roles to access the ERP and CRM platforms on multiple devices.
The power of Platforms
Platforms are more powerful than all the products in it together. For example, the Azure cloud platform integrates other services like Power BI, Azure AI, ERP, and CRM products. Businesses can leverage AI and other business capabilities of the products in the platform to make their operations and offerings smarter.
They now can avoid resource-wastage and scale them up or down according to the demand. Moreover, they an operating digital system conveniently with single or fewer licenses.
ISVs as forerunners of innovation
The ecosystem is getting digitalized and becoming more Agile as products become platforms. Because of these changes that Microsoft propelled, ISVs are now more responsible for customizing Microsoft’s solutions to various domains. ISVs can add innovative customized solutions to the new Microsoft Appstore.
These help various businesses, more importantly, the small and medium-sized enterprises, in various industries. Thus, ISVs take innovation forward in a digital connected world.
What happened to the various Dynamics applications?
The earlier generation of siloed products and applications such as AX (Axapta), NAV, GP (Great Plains), SL (Solomon), CRM, is no more relevant. Though some of them are still supported, some have been moved to the cloud platform, D365 Business Central. The platform includes other intelligent, data-rich, integrated solutions like Microsoft Power BI, Power Automate (earlier known as Microsft Flow).
Collaborations make the migration easy.
There are literally tens of thousands of customized solutions built on top of AX and NAV that are still widely in use by businesses across the world. More than a hundred thousand businesses across the globe use the applications built on legacy products from Microsoft. They need to transform as fast as possible to stay alive. It calls for not only manual effort, but also huge investment in terms of time, money, and resources. Still there is nothing to worry about.
Read our next blog to know the steps and strategies to follow while migrating to the new D365 Business Central
The author was a java Developer at coMakeIT before turning into a stay-at-home-mom. She slowed down to make art, tell stories, read books on fiction, philosophy, science, art-history, write about science, parenting, and observe technology trends. She loves to write and aspires to write simple and understandable articles someday like Yuval Noah Harari. We are very happy to have her back at coMakeIT and contribute to our relevant and thought provoking content.
