Great Plains 7.5 Ships

The new release boasts updated inventory and distribution features, as well as tightened links with other MBS products, including Microsoft CRM, Retail Management System and the Microsoft Business Portal, the company said.

Version 7.5 also brings together Microsoft's Dynamics and eEnterprise applications--part of a new product branding strategy disclosed last fall. Click here to read more.

In addition, the update offers improved supply chain management features. A new "Available to Promise" feature will ease inventory checks by exposing complete views of stocked materials. Other improvements were made to advanced distribution features, the company said.

The latest release of Great Plains is available as a single-user financial package starting at $7,000 per user or as a Standard Edition that starts at $4,500 per user and is tailored for companies with 25 to 99 employees.

The product's lower pricing might help partners grab "some low-hanging fruit" among companies that need to demonstrate attainable ROI, said one Great Plains solution provider.

At Microsoft's Convergence 2003 conference last month, company executives offered a sneak peek into a "paperless" order-to-delivery process, showing off what appeared to be completely seamless links among online order entry, order processing, invoicing and inventory checking. Partners expect still more melding of Great Plains' back-office capabilities with Navision's Office and e-mail functions over time.

MBS hopes to entice partners supporting small and midsize business to build atop the entire Microsoft stack from the operating system and SQL Server all the way up to Office. Such a bundle is attractive to customers that want total integration, said one East Coast solution provider partner.

But Microsoft faces some competition as more businesses of all sizes look to Linux alternatives, industry observers said. The perception is that Microsoft is not necessarily the lowest-cost solution in a world where open-source software is gaining credibility in the business application space.