Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 Now Available!

The biggest question on everyone’s mind heading into Directions 2013 in Nashville Tennessee was “when will NAV 2013 R2 be released?” The question was definitively answered at 5:00 Central time. The answer was “Now”. That’s right, NAV 2013 R2 is now in general release.

So now that we got that question answered, the next questions are what does it mean to us as a Partner, to our Customers and to our Potential Customers? Here are some to the highlights.

Microsoft has been bent on pushing ‘the Cloud’ for some time and the message was no different at the Opening Session of Directions 2013. The difference is that this time they appear very ready to deliver on that message from a Dynamics NAV perspective. While R2 has some nice new features in Cash Management area the interoperability of Dynamics NAV with Office 365 and Azure were centre stage. The Web client has been further evolved taking on Windows 8 look and feel, including cool graphs with vivid transitions as you drill down from your Role Centre. Once of the biggest cheers during the demonstration was the ability to click on a column in a list view and have it sort.

Like most demonstrations it included a lot of seamless interactions with Excel (including Powerview which is very cool), Sharepoint, and Outlook, which looked great.

They spent a fair bit of time on NAV’s new technical abilities like Multi-Tenancy and integration to Microsoft’s SCOM – more for the technical folks than me.

More to come as the conference continues….