In August 2006, Microsoft released the Statement of Direction in regards to Microsoft POS and Microsoft RMS products. In a Webinar to Partners in early October 2006, they confirmed the main points which are the following:
- RMS 2.0 comes out in Q1 2007 and RMS 3.0 comes out in 2008
RMS 2.0 changes:
- In RMS 2.0 they will get rid of the dongles and migrate to standard Microsoft software registration mechanism. They intend to seriously beat up Partenrs and customers to make sure returning the old dongles in 60-day period since the upgrade.
- The Maintenance Plan will become mandatory with new RMS purchases.
- There will be quite few upgrades in regards to functionality, but not as many as one would wish.
- It still will be the same old programming technology
- No major changes in regards to programmability and add-on building, therefore no threat to existing RMS add-ins (though those relying on a dongle number may need to get updated to a different registration model).
- They will also adopt new brand names: Microsoft Dynamics RMS and POS
Microsoft Dynamics POS Version 3.0
- .NET programming platofrm (finally!)
- New look and feel, more consistent with the Microsoft POS-like user interface
- As I also understand, they will merge RMS and POS into one product - No major changes in database model and backwards add-in compatibility
- Additional SDK functions for even more "customizability"
Also, Microsoft will introduce a "Partner Portal" which we've seen a glimpse of. Looks like just a another dedicated MBS-style web site with whole banch of resources for Partners. In general, everything looks acceptable so far. If anyone has some other insights, please share |