Plus: JBoss adds open-source BPM.
Microsoft last week announced Navision 4.0, which includes financial, manufacturing, customer management, supply chain, analytics and e-commerce data tools and offers users a new interface modeled after Office Outlook 2003.
The main change in the suite is its tighter integration with Microsoft’s technology stack. For example, Excel is used as a viewer for the business-analytics graphing tools, and new notification services are built on Microsoft’s SQL Server. The suite is aimed at inventory, manufacturing and business services for remote branch offices and small to midsize businesses. The company has been trying to carve a niche in this category over the past few years, investing $2.4 billion to enter the market with its acquisition of Navision in 2002 and U.S. midmarket business application provider Great Plains Software.
A typical configuration for a single user starts at about $2,500 for the software license, Microsoft said. Implementation and consulting fees are extra.
JBoss has added business process management to its growing roster of open source software. As with its other products, JBoss will sell services and support for jBpm, which becomes JBoss jBPM, but the software will still be available for no charge under an open source license.
BPM software is used to orchestrate a series of transactions involving separate applications into an automated flow of events.
