Microsoft Cloud Accounting – Project Madeira

Posted on: April 15, 2016 | By: Jim Bertler | Microsoft Dynamics GP

I feel the earth move under my feet is the opening line to an old Carole King song.  Well, earlier this week Microsoft may have made the earth move.  They finally took the wrapper off of Project Madeira which many thought was just a cloud based version of Dynamics NAV.  In fact, Project Madiera is a new multi-tenant, public cloud business management service (SaaS) from Microsoft.  It is not a updated version of Dynamics NAV nor a replacement for Dynamics GP.

Microsoft has described the product as targeted at 10 to 100 employees which “need more than the simple financial and accounting tools they started with, but aren't yet ready to make a big investment in a customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.”

As a Chicago based Microsoft Dynamics Partner we are, of course, excited by the announcement, but also trying to figure out what it means and where it will fit in the market place.  Microsoft has stated that it will allow users to stay within Outlook, but handle sales, purchasing, financials and CRM which sounds an awful lot like an ERP system to me.  

In fact, Microsoft tried a similar solution called Small Business Financials several years ago targeted at this same market and it was not successful.  Of course, so much has changed since then especially with the advent of the cloud in the ERP market.  Project Madeira will be available only in the US and only on Microsoft's Azure cloud service.  QuickBooks Enterprise seems to serve this 10-100 employee market fairly well with companies moving to Dynamics GP, Acumatica or Dynamics NAV after they outgrow QuickBooks Enterprise.  So again, exactly where this solution fits remains to be seen.

The official blog post announcing Project Madeira has some interesting details so feel free to read the full post.  You can also sign up for the Project Madeira preview to see the solution for yourself.  

Pricing, official release dates and other details haven't been provided.  At this point the only word is that it will be available in the second half of calendar 2016.  Logan Consulting, your Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner, will continue to provide updates so check back with us!

The next line in the Carole King song is “I feel the sky tumbling down”, so let's hope Project Madeira doesn't do that too!

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