It was not really a big surprise when it on May 7th, 2002 was announced that Microsoft Corporation acquired Navision A/S. Most people had seen it coming. The surprise was that Microsoft had paid about 2 billion USD (2002) for Navision and Axapta. That included what became the biggest Microsoft Development Center outside of the US, the former Navision Headquarter in Vedbæk, just north of Copenhagen.
In 2000 Microsoft had a acquired Great Plains, Navision's biggest competitor on the US market, but the rumors said that Microsoft had realized that GP was not good enough to base their whole ERP strategy upon. Navision, Axapta and Great Plains was put together in a group at Microsoft called Microsoft Business Solutions and the name changed to Microsoft Business Solutions Navision.
(main menu of Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision 3.70)
The domain name of this website also changed from www.navision.net to www.mbsonline.org.
The Navision product team was very busy in 2002, even before Microsoft took over. The move from 2.x to Navision Solutions 3.0 included a lot of new functionality, especially regarding the now integrated Navision Manufacturing and Navision Advanced Distribution. And a lot of this new functionality had a lot of bugs!
So early in the year we got Attain 3.01, 3.01a and 3.01b. They were followed by Attain 3.10, 3.10a and 3.10b.
The first Microsoft release came out as Microsoft Business Solutions Navision 3.60 in the end of the year. Even if they had not yet updated the name internally in the application, where it still said Navision Attain.
2003 seemed just as busy. It started with an updated version, Attain 3.60a. The first version with the new Microsoft brand came out in September 2003 as Microsoft Business Solutions Navision 3.70.
Microsoft first starts talking about Project Green in 2003. This was an initiative to merge the platforms of Navision, Axapta, Great Plains and Solomon into one system. Microsoft first told that the beta would be available in Q4 2004. But was a much bigger project than anticipated by Microsoft, who at this time just had started learning the ERP industry.
In 2007 Microsoft completely stopped talking about Project Green. By then new implementations had almost stopped. Nobody wanted not invest in one of the existing solutions, when they were soon to be replaced by an entire new application.
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