A Road Map for Breakthrough Innovation

The enhanced road map for Microsoft Business Solutions is to deliver breakthrough innovation by aligning its development efforts with customers' needs and their current technology environment. The Microsoft Business Solutions team will enhance and support today's business management solutions until at least 2013 and offer five years of mainstream support for each major release, based on the product's date of general availability, and most products will include eight years of online self-help support.

"Project Green," the code name for next-generation Microsoft Business Solutions' development efforts, will be delivered over the course of two waves. The first wave will occur between 2005 and 2007, and will include the release of a shared user interface based around 50 common configurable roles that people have within a company, all seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office. Microsoft's business applications also will interoperate with service-oriented applications and include a common configurable reporting environment based on SQL Server (TM) Reporting Services and a common security-enhanced intranet and extranet environment based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server to enable new levels of collaboration within and across companies.

The second release wave, which will begin shipping in 2008, will build on the first wave's innovation and apply a model-driven approach to business processes. Innovations released during the second wave will draw on the power of WinFX (TM) and Visual Studio® .NET.

By delivering on its vision of innovation, the Microsoft Business Solutions group will enable customers to take advantage of the increased innovation in its products without experiencing significant disruption or costs.

"With our customers' business in mind, we continue to invest deeply across our business applications," Burgum said. "The Microsoft Business Solutions team is dedicated to evolving its solutions to meet the changing demands and challenges that our customers face."

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