Hi Erik,

What do you expect? Microsoft's recommendation and stategy IS the only choice! ("Nothing else beside me.") Even if other companies and/or people can do better and can proof them wrong.

I've been involved in a 'one-database-for-multiple-countries' project (which is probably one of the projects that partner claimed the experience Erik), and we got absolutely no cooperation from Navision, which was not yet MS at that time. In fact the only contribution we got was "that will never work" and we had to solve all the problems ourselves. The single biggest reason why that project was such a success is because the customer took ownership of the implementation, they ran the show with our assistance.

We can argue about whether it is the right business model, but it is the one in place, and I understand completely why they would not support something like that. Even if they'd want to use a one-database model, the license would become very expensive, and they'd have to make all the "NTR's" happy. How will they divide profits?

The key here is that it's the customer who needs to take ownership, and with the partner model currently in place for NAV that is just not going to work.

But seriously though, there are not a lot of Erik P. Ernst in this world.

For your strategy to work, you need very good professionals with ample requests from the end users to keep them busy.

Microsoft's method is designed so it doesn't put too much strain on the customer and the partner that provides the service to them.

In US we have NA version, which has all the requirements and some more for 3 counties.

I'm surprised why they don't consolidate countries in europe.

Countries that have very similar gov requirements should be all in one version.

This will lower the merging of different databases.

I was in this session and heared your question about localisations in one db. Microsoft gue didnt understand you. If ypu are talking about local implemations ypu should say customizations instead od localisations. And customizations should be equal in every db. Such words said men from microsoft in the retail session.

Hi Erik,  

Your post is quite interesting to me and I would think that a discussion on this topic would be quite interesting in one of our upcoming Dynamics Partner Advisory Board meetings.  The approach that you have outlined is challenging for the majority of customers.  However, the gap that you have highlighted (multi-site, multinational deployments) and the need for capable customer / partner resources to address this issue is an obvious bridge that we need to build to do this work at scale.

Would this discussion be of interest to you?

Hi Steven,

Back in the old days when I was responsible for Localization of Navision though out Central and Eastern Europe, we developed one code base for all countries, and it was no problem at all.

But that was because it was just me driving this, so I would look and see if the "local legal requirement" was really a legal requirement or just laziness on the part of the local people to do their job.

From what I have seen of localized versions these days, is that there is no ONE person in Microsoft that is able to coordinate all the regional requirements. There is too much reliance on local people to set the rules. They just let countries go mad and put anything they want into the standard.

The ONLY local version of Navision I know of that was done properly was the NA version.

It would be far better for all concerned, if the product could be more consistent across countries. If nothing else, it would make for much faster product releases.

For those localizations that are used by less than 20% of implementations, those customizations should be released as an Add-On, and not as part of the local code.

And India should move either to W1 or NA, because what they have now is the major reason that sales and implementations in India are falling apart.

One other thing, is that "back in the good ole days" most NTRs were actually independently owned companies. Those companies invested heavily in localization of the Navision product for their region. Since we were handling 7 or so countries, it made good economic sense to integrate the localizations. But it also meant it was possible for a client to buy in one country and us in another. Thus the NTRs wanted their protection, so they added a lot of garbage to their localizations, just so they could tell clients that they had to buy the local version for legal reasons, and that if you bought say the W1 version, then you would be sent to a siberian slat mine for 50 years as punishment by the local tax authorities.

Local authorities just need their reports, so that was all just BS to try to keep revenue int he country that did the localization.

But now its all just one company, so Microsoft even fromt he economical point of maintaining less versions need to see that a merged product is a good idea.

All,

I presented the NAV 212 session Multi-site and International Organizations (MIO). I would like to take this opportunity to clarify some statements made here in this forum.

First, let me state that I have never been approached by Erik P. Ernst around his feedback to this topic nor around any opportunity for him to speak at any Convergence.

Second, we as Microsoft do understand the various deployment model for Microsoft Dynamics NAV supporting MIOs. As I stated in the presentation and as noted here in the forum, we have a recommended strategy and we do not recommend consolidating various localizations into one database. As I stated in the presentation, we know that some partners and customers have followed this approach.

Third, our global localization and development department are consolidating localizations where this makes sense. Still, we release the localizations in seperate databases as our strategy. This was also the case in the past.

You are welcome to contact me directly as I will not post on this forum.

Regards,

Niels

It will be a lot of fun to see "one DB to rule then all" version... :D

For instance, our latvian "localization" is just a bunch of bugfull unneeded hacks, nothing more...

but it's ok, we'll wait... next several years...

My hairs will became absolutely gray much sooner than new NAV will be released... Please put a CD with NAV installation onto me grave.

I raised this question at the Microsoft Convergence last week about Microsofts opinion about the centralisation of localisations in a truelly International Database. I still consider it is a good investment for them to select only the true legal localisations and combine them in one Database. Because we have also done it ourselves for UK, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Spain,BeNeLux and Italy and we selected only 10% of all localisations to be crucial for the local adaptation.

Erik, Niels,

Interesting discussion.

I have been involved in several projects with a kernel development and international rol-out. And all with a different approach in how to handle the local requirements. For both ways there are pro's and contra's. At the moment I am assisting a company with 8 subsidiaries over the world. They have choosen Erik's model. But they made a mess off it. Not because the model is right or wrong, but because they didn't know what they are doing. And that's the most important thing when 'choosing' a model.

Personally I agree with David: it would be great if MS minimizes local functionality and merges several countries into 1 release, like in NA and Australasian.

And it shouldn't be too hard to do that. Different legal functionality could be triggered by a setup or license trigger. Maybe MS can make a start with it now 6.0 has been postponed?!

So Niels, I know you don't answer on the forum, but let me know if I can be of any help with this.

Regards,

Maarten

Hi,

I was responsible for the localisation of the Belgian version in the "old days" (1997-2003). On the other hand I have been involved in several international projects as well: you get the questions mentioned here everytime. Personally I think making a mix (or the regional approach if you like) is the solution to go for.

Some countries require more localisations than others, that is true. To give an example for Europe: the finance area in NAV is oriented towards Anglosaksian bookkeeping (England, US, Australia, but also Denmark, ...). In this kind of bookkeeping system there is a lot of "freedom" so to speak. This is quite opposite to so called "Roman" bookkeeping (that starts with Belgium and down to the south of Europe: France, Italy, Spain). In this kind of bookkeepping system the left hand doesn't trust the right hand .. if you know what I mean. Hence a lot of extra controls must be build in..

Like David Singleton mentions: no one is on top of it. The process has been out of control (for several reasons, politics is just one of them).

That said, it obvious that there is the given situation today and it will be tough to get arround it.

One element of the orginal discussion is not mentioned: Dynamics AX. Dynamicx AX is THE reason for Microsoft to leave NAV like it is/was for several years. Microsoft does not want to mess up their Marketing. They don't want to make the gap between the two products smaller ... Thats why you, Erik, probably had no chance of explaining your case...